Sword Art Online - Volume 23 - Chapter 4.1

4

“I’m home…”

As soon as I came through the entryway’s glass door, I heard a voice call out, “Welcome back, Big Brother! You’re late, by the way!”

Suguha was waiting in her jumpsuit on the step up to the hallway, hands clasped in front of her chest, hopping straight up and down.

“I can’t help that. I have twice the commute time you do. And I raced home from the station as fast as I could.”

Sure enough, even though September was coming to an end, there were huge beads of sweat on my forehead. It was nearly a mile and a half from Honkawagoe Station to the Kirigaya household, and biking that distance in six minutes had to be a new personal best. I couldn’t brag about it, though, because Suguha could get home in under five, apparently. Still, my wise young sister did not insult her brother’s pitiful leg strength. Instead, she offered me a face towel.

“Here you go!”

“Oh, thanks,” I said, taking it and wiping my forehead.

Next there was a bottle of mineral water. “And this is for you, too!” she said, taking off the cap before handing it over.

I thanked her and downed half the bottle at once.

“Ahhh, I feel alive again…”

“Now time for another sprint!” she urged me. I rushed upstairs to my room and had just barely changed into a T-shirt and shorts when Suguha burst inside without knocking. “Are you ready?! Let’s go, then!!”

In her hand was a well-used AmuSphere.

“Go? Where are you going to dive from?”

“From here, obviously! If we don’t time it right, we might end up alone and in a dangerous situation.”

“Don’t be dramatic…It’s not like the Underworld, with its time-acceleration feature. If we’re off, it’s only by a minute or two. Plus, Liz and Silica should already be in there.”

“C’mon, just hurry!”

Suguha stuck the AmuSphere on my head, then jumped onto the bed so vigorously that the wooden slats beneath the mattress creaked. I had no choice but to lie down next to her. Suguha lifted three fingers.

“We’ll go on the count of three! Three, two, one…Link Start!”

I chanted the command with her, wondering if Suguha’s hand was going to drop when the device took over and flop onto my side.

Of course, I wasn’t going to see it happen, even if it did.

When my eyes opened, I was staring at a ceiling of brand-new wooden boards.

Until around four in the morning, there had been a huge, gaping hole through to the sky, but there wasn’t a single trace of it anymore. The log cabin, our beloved forest home that got ripped out of New Aincrad from the very foundation and suffered such terrible damage in the crash to earth, had been successfully repaired with the extra help of Lisbeth and Silica.

That’s great. I’m so glad, I thought, rolling back over, when something smacked my side.

“Come on, Kirito, get up! We’ve got a whooooole lot of stuff to do!”

“Yeah, yeah…”

I sat up, which loudly clanked the iron armor Lisbeth had crafted for me, and looked to the side. There was Suguha’s avatar, Leafa, dressed in a simple, one-piece cloth dress.

I looked around the room. The living room was much more spacious now that all the furniture was gone, and there were no other players present. Asuna was probably on her way home still. While the other four of us were at school, Alice and Yui were supposed to be protecting the cabin. Where were they now?

No sooner had the question entered my mind than a high-pitched metallic clang! sounded outside the window. It was not the sound of a hammer striking an anvil…It was a sword fight.

“What’s that?!”

I bolted to my feet, opened the door, and hurried outside.

There in our front yard, surrounded by a variety of crafting stations, were two figures swinging swords at each other. The time in Unital Ring was synced up with the real world, so the setting sun was red in the distance ahead of me, making it hard to see who it was. One of the silhouettes was about my height, but the other was much smaller, like a child.

“Yaaaa!”

The childlike figure issued a fierce bellow and swung down a sword with two hands. The speed was impressive, but the adult figure comfortably blocked the swing with a one-handed parry. There was another loud clang. Thick blond braids shone, dazzling, in the light of the setting sun.

At last, I realized that the adult was Alice. And the black-haired girl fearlessly attacking the most powerful Integrity Knight ever was none other than my daughter with Asuna, the world’s greatest top-down AI, Yui.

“H-hey, what’s going on…?”

Without thinking, I tried to insert myself in the fight, and Leafa grabbed my shoulder.

“Wait. Isn’t she training?”

“T-training…?”