Sword Art Online - Volume 23 - Chapter 2.1

2

The returnee school that Asuna, Lisbeth, Silica, and I attended was located in a renovated public school that had previously been abandoned after two local high schools combined into one.

Due to this, the campus was surprisingly complex and contained a number of spots that, like in an RPG, you couldn’t find unless you already knew they existed. The patch of green I was standing on was one of them—you had to go upstairs in the extracurricular club building, head all the way down the hall, exit through the emergency door, go down the outside stairs, then walk along the planters until you passed through a tiny gap you wouldn’t notice otherwise.

This patch of grass, surrounded by the tall planters, the club building, and the library building, was a rectangle about thirty feet to a side. In the middle, where the earth was slightly raised, was a white siris tree and a sandalwood tree, side by side, surrounded by seasonal flowers. Soft grass covered the ground, and there were essentially no weeds. Someone had to be tending the space, but I’d never seen whomever it was.

Ever since I’d found the place this past spring, Asuna and I referred to it as the “secret garden” to keep its information private. Alas, Lisbeth had figured it out after that, so she and Silica visited it, too. And now there was a fifth person—actually, sixth, if you counted the unknown gardener—who knew about the garden.

This fifth person surveyed the space and said in a distinctive voice, “Well, well, this sure looks like a nice, tidy date spot. Ya sure ya wanted to bring me here?”

“I didn’t really have a choice after that flashy entrance,” I grumbled but caught myself and shook my head. “First of all, it’s not a date spot. So it’s perfectly fine if I show it to you.”

“Awww, it’s been so long. Ya don’t have to be so cold, Kiri-boy. Don’tcha want a warm reunion hug?”

The small teenage girl, who wore a khaki hoodie over a dark sailor uniform, and a small day pack, held out her arms. She was only slightly shorter than Asuna and maybe an inch or so taller than Silica. She seemed to have grown quite a bit since the time I’d visited her regularly…meaning the girl who always seemed much older than I was still growing, even now.

Argo the Rat.

That was the name of the talented info dealer from back in the floating castle of Aincrad—who’d shown up in my classroom at returnee school out of nowhere just a number of minutes ago. At a school with such a distinct imbalance between boys and girls—in favor of boys—there was no way an unfamiliar girl in another school’s uniform would go without notice. So I’d grabbed Argo by the arm and zipped out of the room before the other guys could crowd around. Since it was lunch period and the halls were packed with students, the only place I could go was this little green space. Once we were alone, there was a different kind of tension in the air.

I backed away from Argo’s smile and outstretched hands. “I…I’ll save that for the next occasion.”

“You’ve always been a coward, Kiri-boy.”

“I’m fine with that! More important…what the hell are you doing here?” I asked at last. Argo stuck her hands into the pockets of her hoodie and grinned. I couldn’t help but stare at her face.

The features beneath that light-colored curly hair were the same as those of the Rat I knew so well in Aincrad. But because of the lack of face-painted whiskers on her cheeks or because it had been two—or make that four—years since the very start of the deadly game, she seemed much more adult. In all honesty, the first time I’d met Argo in Aincrad, I couldn’t be sure if she was a boy or a girl. But looking at her now, even if you subtracted the girl’s uniform, there was no mistaking her feminine nature. I almost felt a little self-conscious treating her as brusquely as I typically did.

Argo apparently sensed that I was feeling a little awkward, so she came closer, wearing a teasing smile, and said, “What am I doing here? I transferred, of course.”

“H-huhhh?!” I shouted, then clamped my mouth shut. In a more measured tone, I hissed, “Transferred? It’s been two years since we escaped. Why now? And more important, why didn’t you ever contact me? I thought for sure you were…”

I couldn’t say the rest. Argo just smiled and shrugged. “You know I wouldn’t kick the bucket. Besides, ya can’t knock me for not gettin’ in touch when I could say the same of you. With your connections, you coulda learned my contact info easily.”

“……”

She was right.

In the SAO days, I didn’t know Argo’s real name or address or phone number, but I did know the character name “Argo.” If I’d given that info to Seijirou Kikuoka at the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications’ Virtual Division, he would have pulled all the information contained in that user’s data for me.

But it wasn’t just Argo; I didn’t proactively search out any of the players I knew in SAO whose life or death was unknown to me. The group who’d survived the seventy-fifth-floor boss battle would have logged out safely, I assumed, but everyone else—like Mr. Nishida or Kibaou, Nezha, Mahocle, and so on—could be either alive or dead, as far as I knew. I didn’t try to find out because I was scared. I didn’t want to hear from Kikuoka’s mouth, with all finality, that they hadn’t come back.

For the same reason, I didn’t want to find out Argo’s real-life information. I started to lower my head to apologize.

But with the same speed she had back in SAO, Argo closed the gap and jabbed my forehead with her index and middle fingers, pushing me back up straight.

“Did I ask ya to apologize? I said we were both responsible for not gettin’ in touch. You’ve been kickin’ so much ass in ALO and GGO under your own name, I coulda reached out and made contact if I tried.”

Argo let go and retreated a step. I rubbed my forehead, unsure of how to react. In the end, I just asked her straight up:

“That’s just it…Why didn’t you come to ALO? You’re not the kind of person who would get freaked out by full-dive machines now, right?”

“Uh, who do you think I am?” She grimaced. Argo stuck her hands into her pockets again and rocked back and forth. “Mmm. Well, there are reasons. It’s not like I didn’t care about it at all. When I heard you could bring back your old SAO character in ALO, that was a big temptation. But…I knew that if I went into business as an info dealer again in ALO, I wouldn’t have the same motivation I did back then…”

“Yeah…I guess I can understand that,” I said. But the truth was that I understood it all too well.

Sword Art Online was a true alternate world created by the mad genius Akihiko Kayaba. It trapped us in a floating land of rock and steel and demanded that its players beat the game with a horrifying caveat: If you die in the game, you die in real life.

Hardly a single day went by back then that I didn’t feel fear, despair, panic, or anguish. But those weren’t the only things I felt in the game. There was joy in a level-up, excitement at acquiring a rare bit of loot, exultation after defeating a boss monster. They were true, heartfelt emotions unlike anything I had experienced in the games I’d played before SAO. As hard as it was to admit, even my main game now, ALO, which I truly enjoyed, didn’t elicit the same level of dedication that SAO had…

But I brushed that momentary sentiment aside and asked, “In that case…what have you been doing the last two years, and where?”

“I’ve been going to school where I live, obviously.”

“Oh…”

But of course. That should have been obvious. I’d been through a lot after SAO, as well, but for the most part, what I did boiled down to “going to school where I live.”

“Where are you from? What year are you in?”

Argo thrust out her right hand and replied, “Two questions’ll cost ya a thousand col.”

“Oh, right…”

I reached into my uniform pocket for a thousand-col gold coin before I stopped myself. Argo just laughed.

“Nya-ha-ha-ha…I’m just kiddin’. I live in the lower left part of Kanagawa, and I’m in my last year of high school.”

“Lower left,” I murmured, consulting a mental map of Kanagawa Prefecture. I knew that in the southwestern part of it were the cities of Odawara, Hakone, and Atami…but the last one was actually in Shizuoka. In any case, they weren’t exactly close to Tokyo. If she was in the third year of high school, that made her a year above me. Like Asuna and Liz, she’d be graduating in the latter half of the year.

“…Why would you transfer here now?”

“Mmm.” Argo grunted, then shrugged and said, “Ah, might as well.” She reached for the little day pack she was wearing. Her fingers dexterously found the pocket on the back without looking, and she pulled out a rectangular case. It was made of yellow leather, and she removed a gray card from it that she handed to me.

I took the item, which I saw was actually a business card. My eyes were drawn to the name printed in the middle of its face.

“Tomo…Hosaka. That’s your real name?”

“Sorry, it doesn’t sound like it’d be my name, huh?”

“Erm, I didn’t mean it like that…I was just surprised that you’d tell me your real name that easily…”

“I’m transferring to this school. It’s not like I can hide it forever.” Argo, aka Tomo Hosaka, pouted.

I looked back at the business card. Right beneath her name was an e-mail address and phone number. On the upper left was her title. To my surprise, it said MMO TODAY, WRITER/RESEARCHER.

“Wait, really?!” I exclaimed.

That reaction alone told her what I had spotted on the card. She nodded and said, “Yep.”

“So you’re a writer for MMO Today…Meaning I might have already read several articles you’ve written without realizing it…?”

“Probably.”

“But isn’t MMO Today centered around news about The Seed? Can you write articles if you’re not playing the games?”

“I’m not covering individual games. I’m more focused on overall news of The Seed Nexus and the hardware end, I guess. Sometimes I’ll whip up a character and do a quick dive, but as soon as my research is done, I delete ’em.”

“Ohhh…”

I exhaled and looked over Argo’s face again. It wasn’t particularly shocking that she was one year older than I, but hearing that she was a writer for MMO Today, the biggest source of news on the world of VRMMOs, made me feel like the gap between us was that much larger. I didn’t even have a part-time job.

“…I guess…I have to treat you with more respect…From now on, I’ll call you Miss Hosaka…”

“Knock it off! Just be normal,” Argo snapped quite seriously. She jutted her chin at me accusingly and said, “Well? You’re gonna make me introduce myself and won’t do me the same courtesy?”

“Huh? Oh, right…”

At long last, I realized I hadn’t actually told her my real name. It felt awkward to do it now, after all this time, but I didn’t have a business card to do the talking for me.

“Well, uh…my real name is Kazuto Kirigaya. It’s good to see you again.”

“Yep. Likewise,” she said, grinning, and stuck out her right hand. Her palm was vertical this time, making it clear she was asking for a handshake, not payment. I hesitantly reached out and grabbed it.

She squeezed firmly. Through her skin, I felt a pulse that didn’t belong to me.

“…You’re alive,” I said, the words I couldn’t bring myself to say earlier.

Argo smiled at me again, though the nuances of its warmth were slightly different this time. “It’s thanks to you, Kiri-boy. The truth is, I didn’t see myself lasting until the hundredth floor. If you hadn’t beaten it on the seventy-fifth, I’d have prob’ly kicked the bucket somewhere before then.”

“It wasn’t just me…”

That was all I could say. There was a sudden wrenching feeling in my chest. And it was true—I only defeated Heathcliff, aka Akihiko Kayaba, because of the support, encouragement, and guidance of many players. That included Argo, of course.

I’m so glad she survived, I thought, savoring the emotion, before I let go of her hand. I inhaled the forest-scented air, then exhaled, ridding myself of all those lingering feelings. Then I got back on topic.

“So…what’s the relation between you transferring to this school and your writing position with MMO Today?”

“Ahhh, that…”

But Argo didn’t say another word. She glanced toward the gap between the planters, which was the only way in or out of the secret garden. I started to hear some quick, sprightly footsteps.

A few seconds later, Asuna burst into the green space, holding her phone in one hand. I’d sent her a text while we were on the way over here. Asuna came to a stop on the grass, looked at me first, then at Argo next to me.

“…No way…”

Her hazel-brown eyes glittered with the light trickling through the leaves overhead. Argo blinked, too, then lifted her hand and made a waving motion.

“Hiya. How ya been, A-cha—?”

But she couldn’t finish her question. Asuna charged with such speed that she seemed to be possessed by her old identity, the Flash of SAO, and she wrapped the smaller woman in a tremendous hug. Her phone slipped out of her right hand in the process, and I just barely managed to catch it before it hit the ground.

Asuna buried her face in Argo’s shoulder and murmured, “I knew…I knew I would see you again one day.”

“…Sorry I haven’t been in touch for a while, A-chan,” she whispered, patting the back of the other girl’s blouse. Once they separated, Asuna stared her in the face, then said the exact same thing I had several minutes earlier.

“So, um…what exactly are you doing here, Argo?”

Lunch period at returnee school lasted from 12:40 to 1:30. Fifty minutes was a long lunch for a high school, but we didn’t have enough time to sit around and reminisce. Plus, when you were a growing teenager, skipping lunch was not an option if you wanted to survive the day.

So the message I sent to Asuna on the way over was GET THREE PORTIONS OF SOMETHING FROM CAFETERIA, COME TO SECRET GARDEN. Asuna brought three baguette sandwiches. One of them was Camembert, ham, and arugula. The second was cream cheese, smoked salmon, and tomato. The last was shrimp, avocado, and basil. We set down a lightweight polyethylene sheet at the foot of the sandalwood tree, and Asuna gave Argo the first choice of sandwiches.

“Pick whichever one you like, Argo. This is on me.”

“Ah, geez, I can’t do that,” she protested, but Asuna shoved the three sandwiches toward her face with a smile.

“Yes, you can. Remember how you helped us with the quest when we were buying the house in the forest on the twenty-second floor? I’m paying you back for that!”

“…Ahhh, right, that did happen,” Argo said, her eyes narrowing as she reminisced. “All right, I’ll accept yer gift. I think I’ll take…this one.”

With a grin, she took the smoked salmon baguette. Asuna turned to look at me and asked which one I wanted. Out of the two, I figured she would want the avocado, so I told her, “Ham and cheese!”

Despite being two years since we were released from SAO—and living together with Asuna for only two weeks in that world—I couldn’t get past the habits from sharing an inventory back then. And I had developed a bad one: Whenever Asuna paid for something for the both of us, I often forgot to pay her back. I only realized it this time after I’d taken the sandwich, and I quickly pulled out my phone. Asuna had bought us three iced teas, too, so I totaled the cost of three portions, divided by two, and input that into the payment app so Asuna’s device could read the code it displayed. It was even easier to send personal payments using an Augma, but in my panic, I left that in my bag back in the classroom.

At that very moment, I froze, phone in one hand and baguette in the other, and gasped, “Oh…!!”

We were supposed to be using this lunch period to meet with Liz and Silica in the cafeteria to talk about the anomaly that had shaken The Seed Nexus to its core yesterday. On top of that, Suguha and Sinon were supposed to take part using Augmas from their high schools in Ohmiya and Ueno. All of them were waiting for me and Asuna to join them right now.

Argo gave me an odd look, but Asuna just rolled her eyes and said, “So you did forget. Don’t worry—I got in touch with everyone and asked them to postpone the meeting until after school.”

“Oh…th-thanks,” I said sheepishly.

Argo ducked her head, too, and said, “Did ya have plans already? Sorry for messin’ that up.”

“It’s fine. I knew that lunch break was going to be way too short for what we need to do, anyway,” Asuna explained, passing us the cups of iced tea. “Come on—let’s eat. I’m starving.”

I wasn’t about to argue with that suggestion. I peeled back the paper and bit down on the end of the sandwich where the insides jutted out. A local ran the meal stand in the cafeteria, so while the food was premade, the baguette crust was fragrant and the veggies were fresh. I ate a few bites in silence, then washed them down with some iced tea.

Argo finished half of hers in no time, looking thoroughly satisfied. “This ain’t your average cafeteria food. I made the right choice comin’ here.”

“Pretty much everything on the cafeteria menu is good. But…aside from that,” I said, clearing my throat and returning to the suspended topic of conversation, “you gotta tell us why you decided to transfer now of all moments.”

“The timing’s not that weird, ya know. This school splits its admission period into early and late periods, and this is the entrance date for the late admissions.”

“What, really? Then…they should have just made it a two-semester system, rather than a trimester…”

“Then ya wouldn’t have winter vacation.”

“Okay, never mind, then,” I replied immediately.

Asuna giggled and explained, “This school only developed an admissions system this August. So it wasn’t in time for the end of summer vacation, and they had to set it up for the end of September instead. That makes Argo transfer student number one. Also, they say you don’t have to be a former SAO player to transfer in.”

“Really…? But is any student at a normal school actually going to want to come to this place? I feel like society treats this like its own unique, isolated thing…”

“Yes, but because it’s a specialty school, lots of the curricula are practical in nature, right? You can select the units you really want to learn about…And since the media’s been reporting on the various unique qualities of the school, more people are getting interested. There was a transfer student in my class, too, and they said the same thing.”

“Uh-huh…So Argo’s here for the same…,” I said before coming to a realization.

The anomaly we were supposed to talk about with the others—the forced conversion of players from every Seed VRMMO into the mysterious Unital Ring—started yesterday, September 27th.

And Argo, who was writing articles about The Seed Nexus for MMO Today, transferred here out of nowhere on September 28th.

Was that really a coincidence? Argo claimed it was the first day of school for the later admissions, but that couldn’t be the only reason.

“Argo, are you actually here because of Unital—?”

She cut me off by pressing her index finger against my lips.

“Don’t be in such a rush, Kiri-boy. I’ll give ya a proper explanation, but I don’t have enough time for it now. Mind if I join you for that after-school meeting?”

“Wh…what?”

Asuna and I shared stunned looks.

In the SAO days, Argo had contributed much to our advancement through the deadly game, thanks to her business as an info dealer. But around the middle floors, she was focused on behind-the-scenes matters, and even I hardly saw her after that point. Silica and Liz might have known her name, but they probably never bought or sold her information, and Leafa and Sinon would have no point of reference for her whatsoever.

But thinking back on it, Liz and Silica had only met Leafa a year and a half ago, and Sinon just nine months before. But now they were so close, it was like they’d been friends for years. Argo had a chance to fit in, too. Asuna and I nodded and turned back to Argo.

“That’s fine. But…just…don’t say anything weird, okay?”

“Whaddaya mean, ‘weird’?”

“I’m counting on your good judgment in that regard,” I said in all seriousness and resumed eating my baguette. Argo would make good friends with the others, I told myself, and tried not to listen to the note of foreboding in the back of my mind.

At three thirty, after the end of our last short homeroom period, I quickly left the class for the computer lab, which was on the northern end of the third floor of Building Two.

It was called a “lab” because the place had once held classes on information technology when it was a public school; there wasn’t actually some giant mainframe there. And most of the desktop PCs that had been there were removed by now, so the room definitely didn’t live up to its name.

As students of the school’s mechatronics course, two other boys and I formed a research team and were officially borrowing the computer lab from the school. Each of us had a key to the door, but the other two were going to Akihabara to look for parts today, which made it a convenient place for our meeting.

I rushed down the connecting hallway between the buildings, then climbed the stairs to the third floor. I assumed I’d be first there, but Lisbeth, aka Rika Shinozaki, was already waiting outside the room.

“You’re late!” Liz shouted as soon as she saw me.

I knifed my hand and dipped my head in apology. “No way. You’re just early! I sprinted here as soon as my homeroom let out…”

“Well, my homeroom teacher is away on an assignment, so I didn’t have any homeroom. What else am I supposed to do?”

“Waste some time in your class before you come over…”

“I decided to walk slowly, so I would arrive at the right time!”

We bickered the same way we did so often in ALO, but here at school, I was in my second year, while Liz was a third-year student, so I felt the tiniest bit submissive. Klein and Agil were much older, and I could speak with them as equals, so this had something to do with the structural power of school years. If they made a Seed game set in a gigantic school, would it be popular? Maybe there already was one.

“Why are you spacing out? C’mon, open the door already.”

Liz smacked me on the back amicably, and I returned to my senses. There was a key with a faded plastic tag in my pocket. I took it out and stuck it into the keyhole. The cranky old cylinder lock turned. I pulled open the sliding door, held my hand to my chest, and bowed.

“After you, Mistress Lisbeth.”

“Thank you, manservant,” she said smugly, and I followed her into the computer lab. We tried to vacuum it as often as possible, but there was no escaping that particular smell of old classrooms. The afternoon sun blazed through the white curtains, creating a strong enough contrast of light that we didn’t need to hit the switch.

“Ooh, nice. I really like the atmosphere in here,” commented Liz, who had never been to the lab before. I was so used to it that it didn’t elicit any emotions in me. If it were a wooden building, then maybe there would be a photogenic quality to it, but Building Two wasn’t that old. The walls were slightly cracked concrete, the floors were faded linoleum, and the desks were cheap melamine surfaces. But Liz crossed the room, looking at everything with great curiosity, and turned back to me with an enigmatic smile when she reached the window.

“Doesn’t this seem like a scene from an anime set at a school? After class, at the older school building, where a boy and girl are alone together…”

I leaned backward, slightly freaked by her implications.

She jabbed a finger at me and finished, “…having a crazy battle with psychic powers!”

“A battle, huh…?” I replied, exasperated.

Liz lowered her hand and cackled. “What else would we do?”

“Nothing at all. Anyway…what’s taking everyone else so long?” I wondered, right as the door slid open again.

“Thanks for waiting.” “Sorry about the delay!”

That was Asuna and Silica, coming in together. And behind them…no third person.

Did Argo ask us to let her join the meeting and then back out of it? I reached for my phone to get in touch with her, then remembered that we hadn’t traded information. The image of Argo the Rat in the secret garden just two hours ago was already fading into dappled sunlight in my mind. As though Asuna and I had witnessed an illusion…

“Hiya!” said a very casual voice, and Argo herself trotted through the open doorway.

I nearly fell onto the floor. Asuna waved at her and smiled, but Liz and Silica were dumbfounded.

Argo, still dressed in her hoodie, noticed them and gave a little bow, then turned to me and said, “Hey, introduce me already.”

“Oh, right…Uh, Liz, Silica, this is Argo. As of today, she’s a transfer student at the school. She’s an SAO survivor like us, and back in Aincrad—”

Argo cut in smoothly and continued, “Back in Aincrad, I was Kiri-boy’s special friend.”

“Kiri-boy?!” cried Liz.

“Special friend?!” cried Silica.

I performed a slide dash, rushing to Argo’s side, where I successfully withstood the urge to yank her around by the hood of her jacket. Instead, I hissed, “What did I tell you about not saying anything weird?!”

“Whaddaya mean? It’s the truth.”

“How is that the truth?! We weren’t anything other than salesperson and customer, and you know it!”

“Why, what a cold thing to say. After all the times I offered ya preferential treatment…”

Asuna had heard enough of the bickering and snipped, “Can we leave it at that and get down to business? We can introduce Argo during the meeting. Otherwise we’ll have to do it again for Suguha and Shino-non.”

“Oh, r-right…Good point,” I said, seeing the stunned looks on Liz’s and Silica’s faces. “I’ll explain who she is very soon, so why don’t we prep for the meeting now?”

“Are you all right? You sort of tripped over your words there,” noted Silica, fixing me with a piercing gaze. I quickly backed away and made a beeline for my school bag.