Sword Art Online - Volume 22 - Chapter 1.3

3 

It was the wrong place. 

That was the most logical explanation. So I apologized to Asuna, went back down the hill, and rushed around the area for the next two hours, searching. 

But not only were there no log cabins, I couldn’t even find another footpath branching off. Stunned, I returned to the original hill and examined what I could see from there. 

“This is it. This is definitely the place…?” I murmured to myself. 

The spacious grass yard (just an empty lot now with no house there), the thick coniferous woods behind it, the looming pillars supporting the outer aperture of Aincrad in the distance, and the endless expanse of sky behind it all. I could vividly recall each of these details from my memory of being here a year and a half ago. 

But the most important thing of all, the log cabin, was not here. Just to be sure, I went into the clearing, even walked to the very center, but the house did not suddenly pop into being. 

Shocked and rooted to the spot, I heard footsteps marching across the grass behind me until they stopped very close by. 

I couldn’t turn around. The suggestion to move into the log cabin on the twenty-second floor was my marriage proposal. Now that the house wasn’t there, my proposal had essentially been rendered false. 

“Asuna…it’s true. There was a cabin. Right here,” I murmured, face downcast. 

She circled around directly in front of me, patted my shoulders, then cupped my cheeks with her hands and lifted my head. Those hazel-brown eyes were as kind and soft as they ever were. 

“I believe you. Of course I believe you,” she said, let go, and took a few steps back. “I’m sure it got removed for some systemic reason. It’s a shame, but even without the house, it’s a beautiful place. I’m very happy to have come here with you.” 

She stood atop the green grass and spun in place, skirt twirling. The sun dappling through the trees and gleaming off her long hair, her platinum breastplate, and the sheath of her rapier, Lambent Light, were so beautiful they could be used for promotional videos. 

Obviously, Asuna couldn’t read my mind, but she stopped and faced me anyway, patting the belt pouch on her right side. 

“Hey, since we’re here, let’s take a photo to commemorate the occasion. I brought a photo crystal.” 

“Oh…um, sure…” I smiled, but Asuna could tell from my voice and expression that something was wrong. 

“Was this really such a shock to you?” she asked. “That the house is gone…?” 

“Er, no, not a shock, necessarily,” I claimed, shaking my head and hands, but Asuna still seemed worried for me. It was going to be impossible to dispel that notion from her at this point, so I fessed up. 

“The thing is…I had a whole plan regarding what I was going to do here today. And it can’t happen if the house isn’t here…” 

“Hmm? What did you want to do?” 

It was hard to explain with her big, beautiful eyes staring at me, but after proposing to her, I couldn’t be shy about it now. I cleared my throat and started by explaining how the system worked. 

“Well, here’s the thing. Getting married in SAO is pretty simple in terms of how it works. You start from the main menu, go to the communication tab, then go down the list of requests to the very bottom, where the MARRIAGE button is. Then press it, select your target…and if they hit OK, it’s all done. No need to submit any forms to any offices…” 

“And you don’t have to visit my parents and say, ‘I’m asking for your daughter’s hand in marriage!’ either,” Asuna interjected with a smirk. 

I couldn’t help but imagine that unavoidable cutscene (with Commander Heathcliff from the KoB playing her father, for some reason), and it made me shiver. The daughter—er, Asuna giggled at the sight of me. 

I cleared my throat. “A-at any rate! Because the process only takes, like, five seconds, I wanted, you know, to do it in a way that would be more memorable for you. Unfortunately, we can’t have some big, huge wedding ceremony, so I thought the best method of all would be to buy our new house and have something in front of it…” 

By the end, I had craned my neck down toward the ground and started mumbling awkwardly, but I managed to finish my thought successfully and exhaled with relief. 

And then I took a high-speed body tackle. 

Or rather, one had come for me. I hadn’t been bracing for it, so I landed hard on my back in the grass. 

Fortunately, Asuna wasn’t trying to pound my face with knuckle sandwiches. Her warmth just leaned against my chest as she whispered, “That’s…wonderful.” 

“Er, I mean, it was just a spur-of-the-moment idea—” 

“But that’s what makes it so wonderful. You thought so hard about making things nice for us, and you even looked all over for a house…” 

Up close, just inches away, I could see that tears were brimming in Asuna’s eyes. That hit me deeply, and I enclosed her slender body in my arms. 

For a while, the two of us lay there on the grass, feeling the breeze. In time, Asuna’s voice whispered in my ear. 

“It’s enough.” 

“Huh…?” 

“I’m already happy enough. So shall we do the marriage process and go back for today? We can look for a home some other time.” 

The stone bottom of the floor above us was dyed yellow with the sunlight of afternoon. The sun would be down in just another hour or two. 

“Yeah…good idea.” 

I straightened up, still embracing my fiancée, and glanced around the empty circle in the midst of the coniferous forest. 

If we were patient and thorough about looking for modestly sized buildings that were outside of town, had no monsters spawning nearby, and were remote enough that other players were unlikely to wander by, we would surely find something. There was also the option of asking Argo the info dealer for help. Surely the Rat wouldn’t sell the coordinates of our new home to anyone else. Surely. 

So like Asuna said, there was no need to be fixated on the cabin. The little grassy knoll was striking enough, and the memory of our marriage ceremony here would surely remain in Asuna’s memory—and mine—long after SAO was beaten, if it happened. 

……And yet. 

That was all well and good. But there was something about this experience, unrelated to our eloping, that itched at the back of my mind, eating away at me. It was like an unfinished quest that I’d gotten stuck on and abandoned, sitting at the bottom of my quest log. Taunting me. 

“…Kirito?” 

The sound of my name brought me back to my senses with a start. Asuna’s face was close; she wore an expression that said she could see everything. I froze up again. 

“Y-yes?” 

“…I bet you’re thinking, ‘That’s all well and good, and yet…’” 

I nearly made a guilty erk expression but managed to hide it with a poker face just in the nick of time. “Um, wh-whatever do you mean?” 

“I can tell these things, you know. You’re wondering why the house isn’t here anymore and want to get to the bottom of it.” 

Okay, so my poker face wasn’t that great. That was useful to know. I’d learned from experience that continuing to deny it would only make it more painful, so I fessed up and admitted it: 

“Ummm, well…yes. B-but I mean! It just doesn’t make sense that a player home would disappear like this. You mentioned some kind of system-level issue, but SAO doesn’t have any GMs, so I can’t imagine that it was manually removed by an admin. Even if the cause was from a program, houses have infinite durability—they don’t go bad. And there are no earthquakes or wildfires in Aincrad, so the only other possibility I can imagine is…uhhh…” 

I started going into heavy deduction mode until Asuna pressed her index finger against my mouth. 

“All right, stop right there! Look, I’ve known you for long enough. I know you’re not the kind of person who can just turn off that part of his brain…” She sighed with resignation. 

I undid the pause before she had even taken her next breath. “W-well, I know our time off is valuable, but I can use part of it to figure this out…can’t I?” 

Asuna grumbled under her breath that she’d had a feeling this would happen and that it wasn’t the point of our vacation, but in the end, she took a deep breath and announced, “The window for investigation opens and closes tonight!”