Sword Art Online – Progressive - Volume 7 - Chapter 8

8

MY EYES DRIFTED OPEN, LIKE A DANDELION PUFF picked up on the breeze and falling back to earth.

The heavy lids opened just enough for me to glance at the time. It was two in the morning—only two hours since I’d gone to bed.

I wasn’t the deepest sleeper in the real world, but strangely enough, I could completely knock out in Aincrad. Even I didn’t know why I was able to sleep so soundly while trapped in a game that could kill me. Either the focus I needed to survive the day left me wiped out, or the device was shutting out all the extra sensations that would normally keep me from sleeping, or—as much as I didn’t want to admit it—it was possible that I actually felt comfortable in this place.

So it was strange that I popped awake without a reason like this. I’d set my alarm for six o’clock, so I needed to sleep that extra four hours in preparation for the day ahead. I closed my eyes to go back to sleep—but then I felt a gentle shaking and frowned.

It was the vibration that had awakened me. Was it wind? An earthquake? A big wave? Or was Aincrad itself falling?

“Kirito, wake up,” said a soft voice in my ear. I yelped and bolted upright. Or I would have, if I hadn’t collided with something close to the bed. Purple light flashed in my eyes.

““Aurrg!”” said two voices together.

My head fell back to the pillow, where I blinked rapidly, trying to focus my eyes.

To the right of the bed, holding her hands to her temples, was my temporary partner. There was no real pain in this world, but when encountering phenomena that typically caused pain, your brain tried to create a kind of phantom sensation. The NerveGear was supposed to diminish even that phantom pain, but it couldn’t stop you from imagining the pain from a sudden reaction like this.

So for the moment, Asuna and I groaned at the lingering effect of bonking our heads. Once we could look at each other again, I realized that the source of the shaking was not an earthquake or a gust of wind, but it had been her.

“…Um, what in the world…?” I asked.

The fencer grimaced and explained, “I kept calling your name, but you wouldn’t wake up. So I had to shake you, and then you just jumped up out of bed.”

“W-well, sorry about that…But why were you waking me up?”

“I was just thinking I’d like to leave a little bit early.”

“Huh…?”

I had to check the clock again, thinking I’d read it wrong. But it was still two o’clock in the morning. The pale light coming through the crack in the window blinds belonged to the moon, not the morning sun.

“…More than a little bit early, don’t you think?”

“I know…but I started thinking about things, and then I couldn’t sleep,” she murmured, sitting down on the edge of the bed. Her pale-blue nightclothes shone in the moonlight as though they were wet.

“…The ‘Sacred Key’ questline won’t continue until we get to the dark elf base. I understand that. But Kizmel isn’t just some program we can pause with the press of a button. She’s got to sit around all alone at the base, waiting for us to arrive so the story can move forward again…”

“…That’s true,” I admitted, sitting upright.

Most likely, Asuna had arrived at this train of thought because we’d come in contact with NPCs on the sixth and seventh floors who were so expressive and reactive that they seemed to be real people. Myia, Theano, Bouhroum, and now Kio and Nirrnir. They were doing their best to live in this artificial world. And so was Kizmel, of course.

I didn’t think Kizmel would be imprisoned for losing the four sacred keys to the Fallen Elves, but she wasn’t going to be pampered for that failure. If she was in a painful situation, we needed to resume the quest for the six keys as soon as possible, to free her from that predicament.

However…

“You haven’t slept a wink, have you, Asuna? I’m not thrilled about the idea of moving around an unfamiliar environment in the middle of the night, when you’re short on sleep…Can’t we at least get another hour of sleep?” I suggested.

But Asuna just waved her head from side to side. “No. This is one of those sleepless nights.”

“Sleepless nights, huh…?”

I could understand that. I’d experienced wanting to go to sleep so badly (that the focus just kept you awake) many times before being trapped in SAO—and a few times since, too. Oh well, as long as I’m watching out for her, I guess we’ll be all right, I thought, and was about to suggest that we get up and leave.

But then Asuna said, “Though I might be able to catch a bit of sleep.” My mouth clamped shut, then opened again.

“Then in one hour, let’s say, we should meet up in the living r—”

Before I had even finished my sentence, Asuna toppled to her right. She turned on her side, lifted her feet up onto the bed, grabbed a pillow and rested her head on it, then went still.

“……”

I stifled the inclination to ask her to go back to her own bedroom. If she was having trouble sleeping but feeling drowsy now, it would be cruel to interrupt her.

Plus, this wasn’t the first time I’d slept very close to Asuna. If you played together as partners, there would be time when you needed to camp out and share a bedroll in the wilderness. You had to be used to this scenario.

I scooched over a tiny bit from the softly breathing girl, set my internal alarm to three o’clock, then stretched out on the bed.

Ten seconds later, I murmured silently, “This is one of those sleepless nights.”