Sword Art Online - Volume 23 - Chapter 3

3

The bus heading to the north gate of Kichijoji Station was surprisingly empty. Asuna sat close to the exit, rested her school bag on her knees, and exhaled.

The warmth of the unexpected reunion with Argo still buzzed in her chest. But at the same time, there was something discordant about the day. That feeling was coming from her meeting with the other transfer student, Shikimi Kamura.

There hadn’t been any hostility from Shikimi, not at all. They’d talked for just a few minutes, and she’d been completely relaxed the entire time. The reason she’d come over to say hello, despite being in the classroom next door, was because, according to her, they’d met at a party within the electronics manufacturing industry years and years ago. Asuna didn’t remember her, but Shikimi Kamura was apparently the daughter of the founder of Kamura, the makers of the Augma and rival to RCT Progress.

But it wasn’t Shikimi’s background that distressed Asuna’s subconscious so much.

It was her uniform. She was wearing the high school uniform of Eterna Girls’ Academy, a unified twelve-year school in Minato Ward—the school that Asuna had attended before she’d become prisoner to Sword Art Online.

Asuna had only attended through middle school, but she did not remember ever knowing a student in her year with the family name of Kamura. It was a distinctive name, and Shikimi had a striking appearance, so she couldn’t possibly have missed seeing her during all three years of school.

That meant Shikimi had come to the high school of Eterna Girls’ Academy from somewhere else and, half a year before graduation, transferred to the returnee school instead.

Asuna asked if that was going to have a negative effect on her exams, but Shikimi was planning to go to college overseas and had already received a diploma from the International Baccalaureate and an official SAT score report. She’d heard that American colleges valued the essay portion just as much as the score, which helped explain the decision to come to the returnee school, where there was a greater degree of freedom for scholastic pursuits. But it still seemed like an extreme decision, and it was hard for Asuna to shake the unpleasant idea that Shikimi viewed the school like a special subsidy to take advantage of.

That impression was probably coming from the uniform Shikimi was wearing. If the SAO Incident hadn’t happened, Asuna might have been wearing that gray blazer, too. Eterna’s middle school had a featureless jumper dress for a uniform, so the blazer jackets the high schoolers wore, with their navy-blue collars, looked sharp by comparison. Her mother had told her to take exams for other high schools anyway, so she might not have had the chance to wear it, but it was hard not to think negative thoughts when faced with it once again.

Asuna didn’t have a complex about attending her current school, and she didn’t harbor any secret wishes to redo her life from four years ago. But looking at Shikimi Kamura in that uniform, it was like…It was like she was looking at herself as a student at Eterna Girls’ Academy had she never been trapped in SAO…

“…This is stupid,” she muttered, closing her eyes. There were nine more bus stops until Kichijoji Station. She was likely to stay up all night again tonight, so she had to find her sleep where she could.

Asuna rested her head against the wall of the bus, but sleep would not visit her. In the back of her mind, she couldn’t shake the image of Shikimi’s perfectly pristine features, a clever beauty that, for some reason, stirred up a faint anxiety in Asuna.

Asuna had no complaints with her life. She loved and trusted Kazuto and Yui with all her heart, and she’d met the best possible friends in Rika, Keiko, Shino, and Suguha. No matter what Shikimi, with her perfectly unblemished record, might think of her, Asuna knew that she was perfectly happy.

But the fact that I have to tell myself that is a sign I’m shaken by this.

Asuna let out a long, slow breath and decided to think only about what pleasures awaited her.

The forced conversion to the mysterious VRMMO Unital Ring had brought great confusion and chaos to The Seed Nexus, but Asuna was more excited than worried or frightened about this new chapter. Even the extreme new rule, that you couldn’t log in again if you died, wasn’t going to faze a veteran of SAO.

At present, the developers of ALO—Ymir—and many other groups were working on a solution to the situation, according to Argo. At some point, the incident would be over. Until then, she was going to help protect their home in the woods and, if possible, try to uncover the mysteries of the new world.

Sadly, Argo wasn’t planning to take part in Unital Ring anytime soon, but her transfer to the school didn’t seem unrelated to UR, either. Apparently, she’d had a premonition of the UR incident for a while now, and she made the decision to transfer to the returnee school to get closer to finding out the truth behind this event.

As always, Argo wouldn’t speak about anything she didn’t have evidence to back up, and they had limited time for the meeting, so that was the extent of what she reported to them. But it was clear she was going to be investigating the secrets of Unital Ring from the outside. When they parted ways at the school, she grinned and said that she’d leave the interior investigation to Asuna. That left no other option but to do her best.

Asuna never felt like her long commute was painful, but on this day, she finally wished that her home was closer to school. At some point, the discordant feeling in her chest had melted away.