Accel World - Volume 9 - Chapter 4

4

Many abilities were required of those who would be Burst Linkers, but the most important was the ability to react to a situation.

Anything could happen in the middle of a duel, even if your opponent was a duel avatar you knew well. Your chances at victory in an unimaginable situation were slim if you didn’t react quickly. The chance to collect information and act. You could leverage the performance of your avatar or you could be killed, depending on whether or not you could make this process happen in a short time.

The foundation for Silver Crow’s speed, his greatest strength, was Haruyuki’s own reaction speed. And it wasn’t as though he had only recently developed the ability to race through a moment of paralysis during a duel.

However…

Now Haruyuki’s thought clock dropped to below a single hertz, and he could do nothing other than gape, eyes and mouth wide open.

Ash Roller. So…Wait. Who?

It’s…Ash. He answered his own lagging thoughts. Rides the antique American motorcycle. With the skull helmet. All shrieking with laughter, thinks he’s so hot.

Huh? This is what’s inside Ash? This quiet girl?

Haruyuki used up a full ten seconds before finally processing even a fragment of this new information, but there his thoughts stopped once more. For an instant at least, his own predicament flew completely out of his head, and in the blankness there, a tiny motorcycle zoomed past within his mind. And yet he still stood frozen in the middle of the crowded shopping mall.

The girl with the teary eyes gave his wrist another tug. “Um,” she said quietly. “Let’s. Go somewhere. Else.”

Essentially brain-dead, Haruyuki allowed himself to be led to the large parking area on Basement 2 of the mall. They cut through the orderly rows of EVs, and a familiar compact car appeared. Fresh canary yellow, Italian five-door hatchback—the beloved car of Sky Raker, aka Fuko Kurasaki (or, more precisely, Ash’s mother).

The girl apparently had a remote key because she made a quick gesture with her right hand, and the doors were unlocked, accompanied by the flashing of the car’s turn signals. She pulled the rear right door open and pushed Haruyuki into the backseat before sliding in after him.

He could take the fact that the girl had been given the key to this car as proof that she knew Fuko. Still, he simply could not process the claim that the junior high school girl with the messy short hair plopped down beside him was the Ash Roller, and he sat there emptily. In comparison, it had all felt so much more real when he learned that the little girl who had slipped into his house under the pretense of being his relative Tomoko Saito was actually the second Red King, Scarlet Rain.

However, he couldn’t stay frozen like this forever. Seven minutes had already passed since he flew out of his house in his sloppy T-shirt and long shorts. He had eight more minutes before the emergency lock function of the Arita house automatically unlocked and released Kuroyukihime and the other four, after which they would no doubt come running after him.

Finding him in the enormous condo complex when he had cut his Neurolinker off from the network would probably be difficult, but they had Chiyuri and Takumu on their side. When the three of them were little, they had played countless games of tag and hide-and-seek with this building as their staging ground, and Haruyuki’s win ratio was far and away the lowest of all three. With Chiyuri’s weird animal instincts, once they got around to the ice cream of Enjiya, they would sniff out his location in minutes. Which meant if he really intended to settle the situation by himself, then he had at best ten minutes before he needed to be outside the condo.

Having succeed in rebooting his brain with this little detour, Haruyuki glanced over at the girl, still sniffling beside him, and managed to open his mouth.

“Ummmm, so…what you said before, Ash Roller? So you’re, like, Ash’s friend or messenger…or something?” he asked first, betting on the unlikely possibility that he had misheard her before.

But clutching the white handkerchief she had pulled out at some point in both hands, the girl made a clear gesture of denial, shaking her soft hair. She hung her face, which was for some reason a little redder now, and in a voice that threatened to disappear, oozing shyness, she said, “I’m Ash.”

His thoughts threatened to shut down once more. But he still couldn’t actually believe it.

In the expansive Accelerated World, there were people for whom the images of their duel avatars and their real selves were far apart. Haruyuki himself could be said to be one of them. If you only knew the slender-to-the-extreme body of Silver Crow, you wouldn’t really be able to imagine that this rotund eighth-grade boy was the true identity of that duel avatar.

But that sort of thing happened mostly with external appearance. There wasn’t much divergence in the tone of voice or the way a person held themselves—their “spirit,” as it were. Burst Linkers Haruyuki knew in the real—Kuroyukihime and the other members of Nega Nebulus, Niko and Pard from Prominence, and even that crafty Dusk Taker—were no exception.

In contrast, the girl beside him and Ash Roller had not a single point in common—or at least, that’s how it looked. The words they used, their gestures, their personalities were so different, they could only be called polar opposites. And no matter how he looked at it, that biker was a male-type avatar, wasn’t it? And in Brain Burst, if the person was a girl, then they would definitely get a female type…

“Oh!” Haruyuki let out a small cry as he remembered a certain scene. He threw his body back to the right and stared straight on for the first time at the teary face of the girl.

She shrank back slightly even as she returned his gaze, her face housing a soft weakness and coolness at the same time. She was indeed a girl, but her appearance gave the faint impression of a nerdy boy. Her face did somehow resemble the “bare face” of Ash Roller hidden beneath the skull-patterned helmet shield.

“…You…really…but why…” Haruyuki asked an entirely too vague question.

The teary-eyed girl replied in action rather than words. She opened the small shoulder bag on the knees of her skirt and tucked away the handkerchief before pulling out something else in its place. Right and left arms folded up, dark metallic gray—a Neurolinker.

Huh? he thought, as he shifted his gaze to the girl’s slender neck. Already equipped there was a cute pastel-green quantum communication terminal. Given that she had unlocked the car earlier with a wave of her right hand, it would naturally be strange if there wasn’t.

But then, here came his second question.

Neurolinkers were mobile devices in a line descended from the old cell phones and smart phones, but that was not all they were. They were business cards, wallets, personal identification. The particular brain waves of the user and the particular ID burned into the core chip were linked; just by wearing it, you proved who you were. So that ID was, for all intents and purposes, a “citizen number.”

Put another way, the Neurolinker was a “tagged necklace” the government gave citizens. Reinforcing that, ownership of multiple Neurolinkers was prohibited by law. Of course, there were several ways to get a hold of a second or third terminal, but there was no point in getting just the machine, given that only one key core chip was issued per person, and the chips could be transferred (i.e., to a new model) only at a ward office or government-approved shop. Even the Kuroyukihime had only one Neurolinker. If she had had two, she wouldn’t have had to stay disconnected from the global net for over two years in order to hide from the assassins of the Six Kings.

For all these reasons, Haruyuki was honestly stunned at the second Neurolinker the girl pulled out. “I-is that…yours?” he asked hoarsely. “Y-you can use it?”

“I. Can,” the girl replied, tilting her head at a very slight angle. “But. It’s. Not mine. This was my. Older brother’s. Neurolinker.”

“I-it was your older brother’s?” he parroted, dumbfounded, and the mysterious girl nodded sharply, turning her entire body toward him on the leather seat. However, they were inside a car, so this essentially amounted to her twisting her torso, inevitably yanking up the hem of her skirt to reveal a fair amount of her pale legs.

Even in this increasingly complex situation, Haruyuki, being Haruyuki, could only freeze his eyeballs unnaturally in panic. But the girl seemed unconcerned with his reaction and snapped her back up straight while taking several deep breaths. It was almost as though the girl was just as nervous in this situation as Haruyuki. Placing the gray Neurolinker on her lap, she squeezed both hands tightly as if telling herself, You can do it.

Finally, she took another breath before turning eternally teary eyes back toward Haruyuki. “I—My name is. Rin Kusakabe,” she said, in a clear voice. At the same time, she made a small gesture with her right hand, and a pale-green rectangle appeared in his field of view. A name tag sent via an ad hoc connection. The kanji characters displayed there read RIN KUSAKABE. She was born in 2033, making her an eighth grader in junior high, just like Haruyuki.

“Uh, um, I’m Haruyuki Arita.” Reflexively, he gave his name as he pushed the button to send his name tag in return. The girl, Rin, dropped her eyes to glance at the tag and smiled the tiniest bit, the first time since their chance meeting.

Pressed into an even more panicked state, he gave voice semi-automatically to a question not high up on his list of priorities. “Th-th-that reminds me. In the mall before, how did you know I was Silver Crow?”

“That…A few minutes after. I burst out in the car. I got a voice call from Master. Your picture was attached. And she ordered me to. Do whatever it took to catch you. Before you left the condo.”

“Master? You mean Sky Raker, right?” he confirmed, and then his brain took a shortcut, moving sideways.

The combination didn’t entirely make sense. On the surface at least, Fuko Kurasaki was basically a graceful, upper middle-class high school student, and yet she was parent to the arrogant and insolent fin de siècle rider. From that point of view, the girl before him now no doubt had much more in common with Fuko, but this didn’t answer the fundamental question.

As Haruyuki fought the urge to hold his head in his hands, Rin Kusakabe took the metallic-gray Neurolinker in her hands once more. Each time she moved, a faint floral scent wafted through the car, decelerating his thoughts. When she started speaking again, Haruyuki hurriedly sat up straighter.

“Um. I’ll start. From the beginning. Why. I became. A Burst Linker.”

“My brother’s name was Rinta, and he was an ICGP racer.”

This was Rin’s beginning.

ICGP was a category of two-wheeled—in other words, motorcycle—racing. IC stood for “internal combustion.” In an age where electric vehicles had conquered even the world of motorsports, this was, to be blunt, an old-fashioned race, a lingering obsession with gasoline-engine vehicles that had no AI controls.

Nevertheless, compared with the strong, silent, and smart impression of electric racing machines, gasoline vehicles had an appeal that was hard to deny, with their roaring exhausts and wild spins. It wouldn’t be a surprise if this category of racing, under attack for years as a symbol of environmental destruction, disappeared at any time, but Haruyuki himself had pushed back his sleepiness to watch the midnight broadcasts any number of times.

“My brother was. Six years older than me. And I know I’m the one saying it, but he. Was a talented rider. Two years ago, if he did well domestically. He’d get to go to Europe. It was a chance he embraced.” As she falteringly told the story, Rin’s eyes welled up with transparent droplets once more. “But in the last race. From the inside. He was hit by another car. I was there cheering for him. He was. Crushed right in front of me. Fortunately, they saved his life. But he’s been unconscious ever since. This whole time. Even when they. Force him into a full dive with a medical Neurolinker. There’s only. The faintest reaction…”

Unsure of how to respond, Haruyuki simply continued to stare into Rin’s wet eyes.

In EV races, where AI controls were the rule, there were essentially no accidents caused by one car touching another. This meant viewers did not get to see thrilling passes or the neck-and-neck fights, sparks shooting out from the wheels of both cars, so this was a selling point for ICGP and IC Formula, which had exactly these elements. But it was inevitable that the number of serious accidents was an order of magnitude higher.

Rin blinked several times and calmed her breathing before continuing, “For the last two years. My brother’s been in a large hospital. In Shibuya. I live in Egota, in Nakano Ward. But I chose a private. Junior high in Shibuya.”

“So you could go visit him?” Haruyuki asked in a small voice, and Rin nodded sharply.

“The doctor said. His chances of recovery are higher when. He can hear the voices of his family. And have us hold his hand in the real world. I stop at the hospital every day. On my way home from school. I wanted to go every day during summer vacation, too. But I felt shy about asking. For a bus pass just for that. And then, last summer, in the hospital cafeteria, his primary doctor. Suggested I work there part-time just for summer vacation.”

“I—I get it.”

With the easing of restrictions on hiring minors in the revision of the labor standards, junior high school students were also now able to work the part-time jobs they had previously been forbidden, although the hours they could work were limited. Still, Haruyuki had never once thought about working to earn money himself, and he unconsciously let out a sigh of admiration.

“Wow. I mean, working the whole summer vacation for your brother’s sake…”

“No.” Eyes still damp with the ever-present tears, Rin smiled very faintly as she shook her head. “I’m just clumsy at work. Last summer alone, I broke ten plates. And glasses.”

“Y-you did?”

“And not just. That. Once, I dumped ice water. On a patient’s lap.”

“Y-you…did?”

“Fortunately, the patient was very nice. A little older, but a junior high student like me. And our schools are close to each other, too. We got closer after that. We talk about where we’ll go to high school. About my brother, all kinds of things.”

“Mm-hmm.” Unable to see where this was going, Haruyuki forgot his own predicament a little and leaned forward. The time display in the right of his view was second by second approaching the fifteen-minute limit from the time he’d flown out of the house, but he wasn’t paying attention to that.

Last summer. So about ten months earlier. Right before Haruyuki became a Burst Linker at Kuroyukihime’s invitation.

Rin stared back at him with damp eyes and continued, “After meeting several times, she. Saw through. To my ‘mental scars.’ And then said there was another form. Of the city of Tokyo. And that there. Maybe I could find the answers I was looking for.”

“Your mental scars. Another Tokyo,” Haruyuki murmured, before belatedly understanding what those words meant.

The urban center of virtual Tokyo where boys and girls with pain in their hearts came together and fought. The Accelerated World, the hidden battlefield produced by the Brain Burst program.

“So then this person is your parent Burst Linker?”

“That’s. Right. My kind. Harsh Master,” Rin said, nodding, and Haruyuki gasped.

He had actually almost forgotten, but the girl before him was asserting that she was the Ash Roller. If that was true, then that meant the junior high student Rin had met in the hospital cafeteria was Haruyuki’s own teacher, the level-eight Burst Linker “Strong Arm” Sky Raker, aka Fuko Kurasaki.

He hesitated to actually say Raker’s real name out loud in case Rin was a hostile Burst Linker approaching him with some sort of hidden agenda, although that was hard to imagine at this point. Perhaps understanding what was in Haruyuki’s heart as he fell silent in a momentary indecisiveness, perhaps not, Rin slowly lowered her eyes.

“When I heard the explanation of the conditions for installing the program Brain Burst 2039…I—I thought it would be. Impossible. I only got my first Neurolinker right before I went to elementary. School.”

“So then you couldn’t meet the first condition…right?”

Rin bowed her head slightly in agreement.

The very first requirement to be able to install the Brain Burst program—to become a Burst Linker—was to have been wearing a Neurolinker since immediately after birth. Most parents wouldn’t go to that extreme unless they were very enthusiastic about child-rearing, or the exact opposite of that.

“I. Explained that. But Master smiled. And said. ‘I feel. The light of. A strong will in you. My. Instincts about this. Are never wrong.’”

This sort of gentle and kindly controlling statement did indeed sound like something Fuko would say. But although she might have been the “actually really scary Master Raker,” even Fuko couldn’t fake meeting the first requirement of Brain Burst. Haruyuki cocked his head to one side, and Rin once again lifted up the item she held in both hands.

“Then,” she said. “I. Remembered…when my brother—Rinta. Was little, he was a troublemaker. He wasn’t just going to be an ICGP rider. He was going to make me one, too. So when I was a baby. He used to sneak his Neurolinker onto me. My parents. Said he showed me race videos.”

“Y-your brother’s kind of amazing, huh?”

A stiff smile spread across her face, and she blinked in surprise. They might have been brother and sister, but a different person was still a different person. Even if her brother had put the Neurolinker on her, wouldn’t it have been impossible for her to activate it?

As if guessing the question in Haruyuki’s mind, Rin nodded. “A newborn’s brain’s not. Fully developed until they’re a toddler. So apparently, the particular brain wave pattern can’t always be read. Well. Of course, these are rare cases. But Rinta’s Neurolinker apparently recognized. Baby me as a user, too. And ever since I can remember. Until my parents bought me my own, I borrowed my brother’s sometimes. To read picture books. Do full dives. That was. This Neurolinker.”

What Rin held so carefully in both hands was a worn-out, metallic-gray wearable device.

As he stared at it incredulously, Haruyuki realized something. He hadn’t noticed it until now because of the gloom in the car, but in addition to the peeling paint and wear from normal use, the external plastic shell had a crack like a bolt of lightning racing across it, likely made in some kind of intense impact.

“My brother. Kept using the first Neurolinker he got as a kid all that time. He just changed the shell. To an adult size. He said he could race faster with it. After junior high, he didn’t go to high school. He went straight. Into the world of motorcycle racing. And. All this time…”

Although the ICGP races that Rin’s older brother, Rinta, was part of were old style with no AI control, the riders wore Neurolinkers for the bare-minimum AR display and communication with the pit.

In which case. The machine Rin held in her hands—

“That Neurolinker…In the crash two years ago, your brother was…?”

The girl moved her head slowly up and down at Haruyuki’s hushed question.

“My brother’s team’s. Coach gave it to me at the circuit. Where the accident was. He probably meant for it to be. A memorial. I think. Rinta’s life was saved, but ever since, he’s. Been in a coma. But it’s strange.” She cut herself off and smiled gently. “When Master was explaining. The installation of the BB program. I took off my own Neurolinker and tried putting this one on. The last time I’d borrowed it from my brother was. Right before I went to elementary school. A long time ago. Over eight years. I thought I wouldn’t be able to activate it anymore. But the machine. Worked.”

Haruyuki took a sharp breath. That meant that the girl before him, Rin Kusakabe, used two Neurolinkers, something that should not have been physically—or legally—possible.

Of course, as long as you weren’t a criminal or something misrepresenting yourself and up to no good, there wasn’t really any point in using multiple Neurolinkers. But using the Neurolinker she had used as a baby was probably an effective way to meet the conditions for installation of Brain Burst.

Because both the first condition of having worn a Neurolinker since infancy and the second condition of having long-term experience with full dives were, in the end, interrogating the affinity and responsiveness between brain and machine. Since there were individual differences in the Neurolinker quantum connection devices, it was possible that the machine you first used after you were born was the one your body—no, brain—was most familiar with.

“So then…the Brain Burst program isn’t in this green one now, but in your brother’s Neurolinker?” Haruyuki asked.

“Yes.” Rin bobbed her head up and down. “Since Master said we could only try to install it once. I was a little hesitant. Before. When I said it was strange. After I put on this Neurolinker. In the middle of the virtual flames from the BB program. When I was waiting for the indicator to advance. I heard. My brother’s voice.”

“Huh?”

“‘You race. Down your road.…I’m right behind you, pushing you forward.’” Eyes full of transparent tears, Rin smiled the clearest smile she had since this strange conversation began. She gently opened the lock arms of the battered Neurolinker as she continued. “The installation. Succeeded. But. When I first went with Master to the duel stage. And I saw my own avatar. Without thinking. I laughed.”

She stopped, and the slightest of giggles actually slipped out of her.

“Leather jacket, flashy helmet. The big, shiny American motorcycle. The machine my brother said he was going to. Ride for himself when he. Was a champion in Europe. It was that very. Machine. Telling me to. Go down my own path, and then. My avatar’s exactly like. His own dream. He really. Has always…”

Large droplets on the verge of spilling out were caught by her eyelashes, while Rin held the metallic-gray Neurolinker lovingly to her chest.

Haruyuki smiled at this gesture. “Right. So then, you in the Accelerated World—Ash Roller is like, um…maybe like role-playing? That tone, the style of fighting…you’re acting like you think your brother would?”

Even still, the teary-eyed girl before him and the century-end rider in the Accelerated World were simply too far apart, but given the depths of her feelings toward her sleeping brother, he got the feeling that he might just barely get it.

While he forced himself to digest the situation, Rin looked up abruptly.

“It’s. Not. Weird, is it?” she said unexpectedly. “It’s. Cool, right?”

“Huh?! Cool? You mean, Ash?”

Her bobbing head sent her short hair swinging and then kept charging forward. Closing the distance between them, Rin spoke in a quiet but passionate voice. “The skull helmet. The spiky leather jacket. And the missiles on the bike are cute, too.”

The words were too startling coming from a girl raised quite properly, clad in the uniform of a rich girls’ school, and although Haruyuki bobbed his head up and down, his mouth stiffened up slightly. And then Rin took a sharp breath, as if coming back to herself, and dropped her head in embarrassed mode.

“I-I’m sorry. I. When it comes to the Accelerated World. I just get carried away. In duels, too, actually, it’s. Like that. Maybe because I get too. Lost in it. Thirty minutes goes by in the blink of an eye. Even when I come back to the real world, I don’t. Really remember. The duels.”

“I—I get it.” Haruyuki kept nodding and quickly considered the situation.

The sense he got from what Rin was saying now was that Ash Roller was not a simple performance, but rather to make it through the extreme and intense duels, a second self. So maybe she half-unconsciously borrowed her brother’s personality or something? When he got wound up in the Accelerated World, Haruyuki himself sometimes switched from his normal way of talking to something a little tougher, and his tone also got about one and a half times wilder, so it made sense.

As he became lost in thought, Haruyuki felt a slight change in the air, and lifted his eyes.

…To meet those of Rin fairly close up, after her earlier unprecedented push forward on the leather seat. The irises, still plenty damp, were tinged with gray and made him feel a depth like he was peeking into an ocean.

“But there is. Just one thing I remember. More clearly than memories of the real world.” Rin’s voice was thin and halting, as always, but it echoed as clearly as neurospeak through a direct cable in the sealed car.

To get his once again rapidly rising pulse under control, Haruyuki chanted to himself, She’s Ash Roller, she’s Ash Roller.

But…

The girl who was supposedly the insides of that century-end rider brought her face another centimeter closer and whispered in a weak and yet heated tone, “That’s. You. The first time we fought. We both won once, lost once. Ever since that day. The way you look, your voice. They’ve never. Disappeared from inside me.”

“…K-Kusakabe…” His thoughts, which had started to cool down, shot up again into the red zone, and Haruyuki opened and closed his eyes intently at top speed. Each time his eyelids cut across his field of view like a shutter, he felt like Rin’s damp eyes had gotten still closer.

“No other. Burst Linker even noticed it, but you. Figured out the structural features. Of an internal combustion engine motorcycle and defeated. Me. My brother always. Used to say, ‘Front wheel spinning? That’s no motorcycle.’ He was probably annoyed. At losing to you. Lower level and still a newbie on top of that. But I think. In his. Heart, he was also glad.”

The distance between their faces was already down to twenty centimeters, and Haruyuki’s brain, running at only 10 percent of capacity, couldn’t see the strangeness of what Rin was saying. And almost as if she was also not really aware of what she was saying—or doing, she continued to sidle up to him.

“But. The thing that’s most. Clearly carved into my mind is…you with your wings spread, flying in the sky. Faster than. Anyone. Piercing the wall of air. Almost like. Almost like my brother then. When he would race through full throttle on the circuit’s. Homestretch…”

And here, the large droplets that had been held back by her eyelashes through some curious equilibrium until that point spilled out onto her cheeks. The tears dripped down from her sharp, boyish jaw, and fell onto Haruyuki’s T-shirt.

“I. Liked watching you flying in the sky of the Accelerated World. I liked. Dueling with you, racing along at full speed on the ground. To chase you up in the air. The way you look. Like the materialization of the word speed itself.” Her voice shook, trembled, and stopped.

She lowered her eyes, and several tears that had formed anew spilled out. She took a deep breath and held it for a few seconds before suddenly continuing in a voice colored with grief. “But. But I. The foolish thing. I did. Without thinking of the consequences. I pushed you into. A dangerous situation.”

Huh? What’s she talking about? After a moment of confusion, Haruyuki finally remembered the predicament he was in.

Spurred on by anger, he had summoned the Armor of Catastrophe, and completely fused with it to become the sixth Chrome Disaster. And on top of that, to protect his Legion, he would have to draw the curtain on his life as a Burst Linker himself. The reason he had ended up in this situation was indeed as Rin said—the fact that he had seen the scene of Ash Roller’s death in the Unlimited Neutral Field.

And he had to say that the reason Ash had ended up back against the wall, repeatedly hunted by Olive Grab and the other five ISS kit wearers, was because he (or she) had ignored the instructions of his Master, Sky Raker, dove into the Unlimited Neutral Field earlier than the meeting time, and then traveled a dangerously long distance inside by himself. But he had done so because he was trying to save Bush Utan, who was like his younger brother. To help Utan—who, like Olive and the others, was parasitized by an ISS kit, but unlike them, was trying to break free of its control of his own will—Ash had moved under his own judgement. He’d had no choice. Who exactly could fault him for acting…

“Oh. Th-that reminds me.” Having gotten this far, Haruyuki finally reached the question he should have asked much earlier. “D-did you and Bush Utan make it out through a portal okay…?”

“Yes.” Rin leaned forward, perilously close to him. “Just as you instructed. As soon as we regenerated. We ran together, to Shibuya Station.”

“Y-you did?” Haruyuki let out a sigh of relief. “Good. That’s great.”

At that moment, Rin’s hanging head shook and tilted and bumped into the chest of his T-shirt.

Helplessly, Haruyuki froze completely, and a small hand pressed gently, but with sure power against his back. On the surface, it appeared that the two of them were alone in a car hugging, and in this situation, the chant “this girl is Ash” lost its efficacy. His internal brain clock dropped to the bare minimum, and yet his heart pounded out a beat at top speed…It was a contradiction with the mental clock acceleration of Brain Burst, wasn’t it?—

With the vestiges of mental ability left to him, Haruyuki considered ideas that bore no relevance to the current situation. Then, through the body pressed up against him, he heard an almost vanishing voice.

“I. Saw it. To save me and Utan, you. Summoned that terrifying Enhanced Armament. That’s the Armor of Catastrophe, right? If only I hadn’t. Gotten in the way, it was supposed to be. Purified today.”

Unable to answer yes or no, he simply opened and closed his mouth. Rin’s hair so close to his respiratory organs was shining finely, the faint smell of flowers drifting up from it. As he took in the sweet scent, Haruyuki was aware of a strange sensation rapidly surging up from the depths of his heart. It resembled panic or anxiety, but it was a little different. A sad throbbing, like being stabbed with a soft needle.

“Me being saved. Just me. And you not. Being able to fly in the Accelerated World. It’s wrong.”

Without being aware of it, Haruyuki had been on the verge of trying to take some kind of action when Rin started speaking again, and his hands froze in midair, dangerously close.

“I mean. The reason I’ve been. Able to keep fighting in the beautiful and cruel world. Is because you were there. Because I wanted to. See you flying in the sunset of the Twilight stage. In the Century End stage, reflecting the bonfires. In the bus on my way to school. Back home. I would think about whether I’d challenge you. Or you’d maybe challenge me. I. Looked forward to it.”

Here, the thin, passionate voice cut off, and Rin lifted her face. She looked straight at Haruyuki, tears dripping from her eyes, and the girl who was the Ash Roller—the roaring, racing century-end rider, Haruyuki’s hya-ha-ha-ha, mega-lucky eternal rival—released a single sentence from her cherry-colored lips.

“I like you.”

Instantly, all activity in his body shut down—at least subjectively—and the abdominal and spinal muscles that had supported Rin’s meager weight until that point went limp.

Thud! They fell onto the seat with Haruyuki on the bottom. The five-door hatchback by the famed Italian manufacturer was plenty spacious in the rear, but of course, Haruyuki bumped his head on the inside of the door. But this impact might well never have happened. Because the sensation of contact along the front of his body and the destructive power of the words just uttered had begun to peel his soul from his physical body.

“B-but…” Although it was completely turned inside out and totally hoarse, the fact that he somehow managed to produce a voice in response was essentially a miracle. “But in the real, I’m like this.”

Haruyuki at that moment didn’t even have the extra brainpower to think he was pathetic, spitting something like that out at this stage of the game.

But not only did Rin not pull away from him, she pressed her body closer as she whispered in a teary voice, “I. Actually found out your. Real a little while ago.”

“What…H-how?”

“It’s just. After our duel on Kannana Street, you were standing forever. In the position where your avatar appeared. On the pedestrian bridge. I passed under you. On the bus.”

To this, he had no immediate reply. If you were going to duel in open, public spaces, then the most basic of baby steps was to move once you were done. But for Haruyuki, when the duel was too superheated, a famed contest, he had the bad habit of spacing out and replaying the fight in his mind after he burst out. Apparently, he had somehow been perfectly picked out there by Rin, through the window of the bus.

“But—then, now— If you knew my real, why…someone like me?”

“I mean. You have. Wings. Not just your duel avatar. You in the real world, too. You do. I can see. Those wings so clearly.” Rin’s hand, still wrapped around Haruyuki, slowly stroked the center of his back.

A sensation that was hard to put into words shot through him from the tips of his toes to the crown of his head, causing him to hold his breath.

A bewitching smile rose up on Rin’s face as tears continued to drip from her eyes onto his neck. “Ever since that day,” she said, “I. Decided. If…if I ever got to meet you in the real, I would make sure. To tell you. That I like you. That I’ve always liked you. Ever since you were in level one. I’m glad. I got to tell you. I’m glad. In the end, we got to be. Like this, alone together.”

“Huh? I-in the end?” Haruyuki asked, dumbfounded.

This girl, Rin Kusakabe, who he had basically never met before, sighed heavily before making both her face and voice resolute. “The Armor of Catastrophe you summoned. I’ll get rid of it,” she announced. “With my body. With my heart. I’ll get rid of it.”

“That…What does that mean?”

“I’ll take. All of your anger and hatred. It’s okay. As long as it’s you. I’m not scared, no matter what’s done to me.”

Rin pulled her hand away from Haruyuki’s back and slipped the pastel-green Neurolinker off her neck. Without a moment’s delay, her other hand was putting on the metallic-gray Neurolinker—originally her older brother’s—she had been holding all that time.

No sooner had the arm lock gently taken hold of Rin’s slender neck than her empty right hand flashed. One end of the slim XSB cable she’d likely pulled out of her bag went into her own Neurolinker. The other went into Haruyuki’s.

She didn’t give him the time to say anything. The crimson wired connection warning floated up in his view, and the moment it disappeared, Rin murmured a brief command, her lips so close they were practically touching his.

“Burst Link.”

All the chaos and confusion, and the bittersweet throbbing he couldn’t put a name to, were swept away in the sharp skreeee of his thoughts accelerating.