Sword Art Online - Volume 18 - Chapter 21.7

Chapter 21.7
I’d only dozed off slightly in the classroom, but I felt like I had dreamt a very long dream.

An enjoyable, painful, sorrowful dream. I tried to recall the details as I walked through the empty corridor, but I couldn’t remember anything at all.

I gave up and changed shoes at the entrance.

After exiting the school gate, a chilly, dry autumn breeze blew my slightly too-long forelocks.

I swung my backpack onto my left shoulder, inserted my hands into my uniform pockets, and walked forward with my head slightly lowered.

Directly ahead of me, my fellow classmates were chatting animatedly to each other. To block out those dream-filled, hope-filled, romance-filled, camaraderie-filled conversations, I inserted the earphones of my music player deeply into my ears, hunched over, and started home.

On the way back, I stopped at the convenience store and checked through all the week’s gaming magazines, choosing and buying the one with the most pages dedicated to «Sword Art Online», which should be releasing in around one month. I took the opportunity to charge a couple of points into my online gaming e-wallet as well.

I wouldn’t have to go through these extra steps if I had a credit card, and even though I once ad-libbed a request to my mother for one, I was immediately told that I should perish the thought before I got into university. Come to think of it, I ought to be pretty grateful that she would give an allowance to a child she wasn’t even directly related to, so I wasn’t too bothered by her judgment.

It’s about time we dropped cash and switched to a completely electronic currency… I thought as I walked through the automatic door out of the store.

Then I noticed a group of five, who weren’t there when I entered the store, crouching in a corner of the parking lot. They had probably arrived while I was still focused on the magazines. The space around them echoed with coarse chuckling, scattered with the packaging of bread and snacks.

Judging by their uniform, they looked to be from the same school as I was, but of course I ignored them and was about to leave when—

One of them earnestly focused his line of sight towards me.

It was a small boy, who probably would have been mistaken for a primary school student if he hadn’t been wearing my uniform. He was in a different class than me but we knew each other — no, I should say that, for a certain period of time, we were friends.

He had also taken part in the Sword Art Online Closed Beta held last summer.

For such a narrow gate that only a thousand in the entire nation were able to squeeze through, it was somewhat of a miracle that two people from the same school, and even the same grade level had been chosen. So even I, completely antisocial as I was, went and made contact with him of my own accord after hearing of his selection.

We talked to each other shortly before summer break began, and stopped when summer — or rather, when the SAO Closed Beta ended. During the beta we would team up every three days in the virtual game world, and got to know each other pretty well. Still, the moment I met him again a month after the second semester began, my bizarre personality, my idiosyncrasy of having thoughts like “Who is this guy, really?” towards someone right in front of me — someone I ought to be really familiar with — appeared again.

I felt that within that person, alive in the flesh, there was someone I didn’t know at all. As soon as that thought popped into my head I was unable to socialize honestly with him anymore. Because I felt the same way even towards my parents and little sister.

It seemed that he kept wanting to be my friend for the official launch of SAO in October, as well as in school in the real world, but distanced himself from me after realizing my attitude. After that we never spoke to each other again.

So why was he sitting in the parking lot of a convenience store with students of the type he seemed never able to strike up a relationship with?

From his pleading eyes, and the words thrown at me by a male student beside him with a pudding-bowl cut, the reason became abundantly clear.

“The hell do you want? What’re you looking at?”

The other three immediately creased their brows and pinched their lips together, uttering threatening noises of “Unhh?” and “What?”

In other words, he had been targeted by the «rough crowd» of the class and was either being extorted by them or forced to be their errand-boy. And now he was pleading to me for help with his eyes.

All I really needed to say was “Let’s go home together”. But my mouth just would not move for some reason.

What managed to slip out of my glued throat was…

“………Nothing.”

A hoarse mutter like that. Then I abandoned my ex-friend from a month before and kept walking back on my way. He didn’t say anything, but through the corner of my eyesight I could see his soft face contorting, like he was about to cry.

After quickly exiting the store’s property, I shrank my shoulders while gloomily walking down a path dyed the color of the setting sun. There was nothing in my head. I stared at the asphalt, walking, walking.

The setting sun behind me sank with surprising speed and the street was immediately plunged into a violet darkness. What should have been an extremely familiar road back home from school now felt completely foreign to me. Only the sound of my footsteps echoed throughout the street, not a single person or car in my view.

Pat, pat, pat… crunch, crunch, crunch.

“Huh……?”

I suddenly stopped. At some point the asphalt beneath my feet had become low, thick grass. Are there any unpaved roads like this on the way back home? I contemplated as I looked up.

But what I saw was not the commuters’ street of Kawagoe City in Saitama Prefecture. Instead, I was looking up an unfamiliar small path cutting through a deep wood.

I slightly surveyed my surroundings before glancing at my own body.

The black school uniform I’d been wearing had vanished, replaced by a tight-fitting blue tunic and leather armor. My hands were coated in fingerless leather gloves, my feet wrapped in short boots fitted with metal rivets. In place of my shoulder-hung backpack was a somewhat short, yet very heavy sword.

“Where… am I………?”

I muttered, but there was no response. I shrugged and began walking along the woody path.

It hadn’t been one minute before my memories began to prickle and tingle nonstop. The way the branches curled on these old trees, the feeling of the grass under my feet. I was in the expansive forest in the northwest portion of Floor 1 of Aincrad, the «Town of Beginnings». If I were right, then Horunka Village ought to be just ahead.

I had to get into the town and stay at an inn. All I wanted to do now was to get in bed. Just go to sleep without thinking about anything.

I focused on walking through a deeper part of the wood, which looked blue under the dappled moonlight.

All of a sudden I thought I heard a thin scream just ahead.

I suddenly stopped, then kept walking forward. The trees ended at a clearing ahead of me to the right, and the blue moonlight illuminated the narrow path. Again I heard someone’s scream. Also, the grating growl of a monster.

I inched forward, approaching the clearing, then stealthily peeked around a large tree trunk.

It was a wide clearing reminiscent of a circular dance floor. A bizarre shadow play was squirming about, illuminated by bluish-white rays of light.

The sharp tentacles of five or six plant-type monsters resembling gigantic pitcher plants were whirling around nonstop. Surrounded by them was a young boy who was dressed exactly the same as I was. He swung his sword wildly about, but the monsters’ tentacles immediately regenerated upon being severed, showing no sign of stopping at all.

Looking at the boy’s profile, I realized that I knew him.

He and I had formed a party, working together to collect equipment dropped by those plant-type monsters. His name was… Coper. But why was he surrounded by so many of them?

No matter what the reason was, since he was my partner I had to help him.

Even as I thought this, once again, my feet would not move this time. It was as if they had sprouted roots into the ground. I couldn’t take even one step forward.

A tentacle shot forward from behind, sweeping his legs; Coper went sprawling to the ground. The monsters approached even closer to him, opening mouths filled with human-like teeth.

His face filled with despair, Coper reached his left hand out towards me.

But his silhouette was immediately crushed by the wave of monsters, and after a moment a beam of blue light shot up, accompanied by a meager shattering noise.

“Ahh…………”

Uttering a hoarse moan, I hung my head deeply, like when I had abandoned my friend at the convenience store.

Staring only at the grass beneath me, I got up shakily, then changed the direction I was facing and began walking on the thin path through the moonlit forest again.

Crunch, crunch, crunch… clack, clack, clack.

I suddenly stopped. At some point in time the low grass beneath my feet had become bluish slabs of stone.

I looked up and realized that I was no longer in the forest on Floor 1 of Aincrad; I was now in a slightly dark, nameless passageway. This ought to be somewhere in a Labyrinth… but I couldn’t place which floor I was on just from its appearance. I could only press on.

Almost without me noticing, all of my full-body equipment and the sword on my back had changed as I walked silently along the straight corridor. I continued to walk, and walk, as though I were pursuing my own shadow reflected on the wall by the oil lamps. Aincrad’s largest Labyrinth was 300 meters wide, so a straight corridor this long should not exist, but I did not stop, nor did I look back. I only kept moving my feet.

All of a sudden I thought I heard a thin voice coming just ahead.

It was not a scream, but a very joyous cheer. Moreover, it was several cheers overlayed on top of each other.

Somehow, those voices felt terrifically nostalgic. I slightly quickened my footsteps, pressing towards the source of the voices.

Finally, I saw a rectangular entrance in the wall to my left, from which a warm yellow glow was pouring out. I fiercely moved my feet, which for some reason had grown leaden, and came to the entrance.

Looking through the doorway, I saw a moderately wide room. Four players were facing the far wall, their backs to me.

I didn’t need to look at their appearances to immediately recognize them.

The spear-wielder with unruly hair wearing a bizarre hat was Sasamaru.

The tall and lanky shield-bearing mace-wielder was Tetsuo.

The small dagger-user wearing the beanie was Ducker.

And finally, the short-haired girl equipped with a small spear was……… Sachi.

They were all members of the same guild as me. While their leader Keita negotiated the price of a guild home, they had come to this Labyrinth in order to make some money to buy furniture.

Wonderful… Everyone was safe.

I don’t know why that thought popped into my mind just as I was about to talk to them, but my mouth would not open this time either. My feet were immobile, seemingly glued to the floor.

As I stood frozen to the spot, the four of them were bent over, peering down at a giant treasure chest placed beside the wall. The instant I realized this, a vile chill flashed down my spine.

Ducker, the thief, was complacently closing in on it, attempting to disable the chest’s trap.

—No. Stop. No.

I screamed in my head, but I could not articulate a voice. No matter how much I wanted to burst into that room, my feet would not move.

Ducker swiftly opened the lid of the chest.

In a flash, an earsplitting alarm rang out and two doors concealed in the walls to their left and right opened. Innumerable bloodthirsty monsters poured out from within.

“Ah…… AH………!”

My throat emitted a hoarse, cracked scream.

That was all I could do. Unable to move even a finger, I was only able to watch as my partners were surrounded by the monsters.

The first to die was Sasamaru. Next was Ducker, and then Tetsuo followed suit and exploded into azure particles, flying in all directions. Now alone, Sachi turned her head to look back towards me.

Her lips, parted in a sorrowful smile, wavered slightly.

In the next moment the monster’s weapons and claws fell without mercy, and her slender body was wrapped in blue light.

“………………!!”

As I shrieked silently, Sachi transformed into countless shards of glass and flew into the air right before my eyes.

The tens of monsters also disappeared, almost melting into the air, and the room was shrouded in darkness.

Finally able to move, I dropped to my knees.

Enough. I don’t wanna walk anymore. I don’t wanna watch anymore.

Kneeling on the ice-cold floor, I plugged my ears and shut my eyes as tightly as possible. But the memories were like ice water, gushing at me without end and devouring me whole.

The two years of day-to-day battle within the floating castle of steel.

The boundless sky I had aimed for in the fairy kingdom.

The crimson bullets intersecting in their flight across the wilderness of perpetual dusk.

I don’t wanna remember it ever again. I don’t wanna know what happens next either.

I prayed desperately, but the flood of memories continued to besiege me with no end.

Suddenly being displaced from the real world.

Awakening in a clearing surrounded by thick forest.

Walking forward as though being guided by the sound of the axe, and arriving at the roots of a gargantuan tree, I met him.

The fight against the goblins. The felled tree.

The lengthy journey towards the center of the world. The two years spent training at the academy.

No matter when, he was always by my side. With that calm smile of his.

With him, I can do anything, no matter what it is.

Shoulder-to-shoulder as we raced up the marble tower, defeating strong enemy after strong enemy.

Reaching the top of the tower at long last,

Battling the ruler of the world,

And at the end of lengthy, bloody fight.

He, his,

Life———

“AH… AHHHHHHHHHHHHH—!!”

I clutched my head with both arms, shrieking at the top of my lungs.

It was me. My uselessness, my stupidity, my weakness had killed him. Had spilled blood not meant to be spilled, lost a life not meant to be lost.

I should have died. My life here is temporary. Nothing would have happened we had just exchanged roles.

“AHHHH… AHHHHHHHH…!!”

Bellowing and writhing in agony, I fumbled for the sword that should be on my back. I’d use it to spear my own heart and slit my own throat.

But my fingers touched nothing. I searched for it around me, thinking I’d dropped it, but the only thing I saw was a black, viscous fluid.

I ripped open the front of my black shirt with my bare hands.

My right hand fingers, curled into claws, pierced into my thin, bony sternum.

My skin split and my muscles tore, but I didn’t seem to feel any pain. I continued to penetrate my own chest with my own hands.

To tear out my heart and crush it.

This is all I can do for him… and for all of those whom I have betrayed and abandoned until today… this final———

“Kirito-kun…”

Suddenly, someone called my name.

My hands stopped, and I raised my empty eyes.

Behind the darkness, at some point, a chestnut-haired girl was standing there.

Her brown, tear-filled eyes remained fixated on me.

“Kirito…”

With a second voice to my right, another person appeared. A bespectacled girl. Her eyes were also swimming with tears behind her glasses.

“Onii-chan…”

Then a third person appeared.

A girl with straight-cut black hair, tears streaming nonstop from her large eyes.

The will and emotions of these three girls transformed into light, projecting from them, flowing into my body.

A warmth, like that of sunlight, healing my wounds, melting away my sorrow.

—But.

But… Ahh, but.

How could I ever have the right to be forgiven like this?

“I’m sorry.”

I heard the word drop from my own mouth.

“I’m sorry, Asuna. Sorry, Sinon. Forgive me, Sugu. I… can’t get up anymore. I can’t fight anymore. I’m sorry………”

Then, I prepared to crush the heart I tore from my own chest.

***

“Why… What happened, Kirito-kun?!”

Higa Takeru yelled hoarsely, desperately holding onto his consciousness, which was ebbing away with the blood flowing from the gunshot wound on his right shoulder.

He had already fed an enormous amount of Mnemonic Data from Yuuki Asuna, Asada Shino, and Kirigaya Suguha’s three daisy-chained STLs into Kirigaya Kazuto’s damaged Fluctlight in order to restore it. Even Higa, who had conducted countless experiments in his career, was utterly shocked by the sheer volume of Data, which in itself could be called a miracle.

But the 3D diagram displaying the dynamism of Kazuto’s Fluctlight on his phone’s screen had stopped short of the line that indicated functional restoration.

“Is even this… not enough…….?” Higa moaned.

At this rate, Kirigaya Kazuto’s nearly-restored «main body» — his self image, will be unable to return to reality, connecting only with painful memories that tortured him, and will be unable to return from that point. Awaiting him would be an endlessly repeating nightmare. In that situation, one could say that being functionally terminated was a much better fate.

He needed at least one more person.

If only there were another person with deep bonds with Kazuto, possessing strong impressions of him!

But according to Lieutenant Colonel Kikuoka Seijirou, the three currently daisy-chained girls seemed to be the ones who understood and loved Kirigaya Kazuto the most in the world. Moreover, there were no more usable STLs in the RATH Roppongi branch or the Ocean Turtle.

“Dammit… Goddammit…”

Higa clenched his teeth, clasping his right fist, about to slam it onto the duct wall.

But then he relaxed it.

“………What is this………? This… connection……?”

Higa murmured, bringing his blood and sweat-stained glasses closer to his phone.

He hadn’t noticed it before, but just now he had realized that on the window displaying the state of Kirigaya Kazuto’s Fluctlight, other than the three connection lines coming from the girls’ STLs, there was a fourth one — a gray line extremely faint in color, reaching from the bottom of the diagram and beyond.

As though he were being sucked towards it, Higa poked the touch panel with his right index finger, and flicked upwards.

The image scrolled downwards, revealing the source of the gray line.

“It’s… It’s from the Main Visualizer!? Why………?”

Higa shouted, forgetting his own serious injury.

The Main Visualizer was the immense data storage center situated at the heart of the Light Cube Cluster, which collected all of the souls of the Underworld residents.

Only the geography, architecture, props, and related objects of Underworld should be stored there, with no human souls whatsoever.

But—

“Object… Memories as objects…”

Higa’s brain raced at maximum capacity as he muttered unconsciously.

“The memories of the Fluctlights and the objects of Underworld, their Data format is the same… In that case, if someone were to brand their will, and thoughts, onto an object… would that object display similar function… to a Fluctlight………?”

Even as he arrived at this conjecture, Higa remained half-dubious. If such a thing were possible, then in Underworld a person’s mere willpower would be enough to control an inanimate object.

But he believed that this single, thin connection line was his only hope.

What is going to happen? — Higa was unable to predict whether the situation would look up or worsen, but he steeled his resolve and opened the pathway between the Main Visualizer and Kazuto’s STL.

***

“Kirito.”

Just before my heart was destroyed—

A new voice called my name. A strong, warm voice that seemed able to contain everything.

“Kirito.”

As I slowly, slowly raised my head, I saw…

He was standing firmly on where had been endless darkness just a moment before.

There was not a single stain on his blue clothing. His messy, flaxen hair gleamed brightly even against the darkness, and a calm smile rested on his lips.

His deep green eyes were, like always, filled with a soft, yet strong glow.

My hands left my imperceptibly healed chest and reached towards him as I stood.

A low voice softly called his name from my trembling mouth.

“…Eugeo.”

And again.

“Are you still alive, Eugeo?”

My best friend, my best partner, Eugeo—

Silently shook his head, a hint of sorrow in his smile.

“This is your memory of me in your heart. Along with the memory fragments I left behind.”

“Me… mory……”

“Yeah. Have you forgotten? Hadn’t we been convinced about it back then? Memories…”

Eugeo splayed his right hand and pressed it to his own chest.

“…are right here.”

I followed his movements like a reflection in a mirror, then said:

“Always, right here.”

Eugeo smiled at this, and at that moment Asuna stepped forward from beside him:

“Our hearts are always connected with yours, Kirito-kun.”
Stepping forward from the other side, Sinon nodded, the pigtails on the side of her face shaking.

“No matter how far apart we are… even if one day we must bid farewell.”

Coming forward from beside her, Suguha continued with a voice filled with energy:

“Our memories and feelings will always be connected. Won’t they?”

Hot, transparent liquid finally began to stream from my eyes.

I stepped forward, earnestly returning the gaze of my forever closest friend.

“Can I do it… Eugeo? Can I go forward… once more?”

His response was very quick and very firm.

“Of course, Kirito. There are many waiting for you. Well then… let’s go, together, and no matter where, I will always be by your side.”

Our outstretched hands touched. Asuna, Sinon, and Suguha’s hands overlapped with ours as well.

In an instant, the four people before me transformed into white rays of light and flowed into my body.

And then———