Sword Art Online - Volume 26 - Chapter 2

2

The little brown creature was a long-eared wetrat, and she called it Natsu.

Natsu was now resting on Laurannei’s lap, happily gnawing on something that looked like a walnut. We were sitting in a circle on a blanket the platform operator had brought out, and the creature examined the entire group of us before settling on Laurannei. Had it been totally at random, or was there a method behind its choice? I could only wonder about the answer as I sipped my cofil tea.

Mysteriously, not only did the platform operator’s basket contain a picnic blanket large enough to seat ten people, she also had eight cups in there. It was as if she’d come prepared, knowing we were all going to visit today. But if so, why had she welled up with tears when she saw me, Asuna, and Alice?

I had so many questions, but after pouring the cofil for us, the platform operator got up and walked over to Selka, Ronie, and Tiese. She used a large brush with strangely colored bristles to carefully sweep the dust off the three statuesque figures.

As a matter of fact, two hundred years spent under a tree would lead to a lot more than just a little pile of dust. The fact that the girls weren’t covered in vines and moss was presumably because the platform operator came by regularly to clean them…But even still, this was two centuries we were talking about.

“I…,” murmured Asuna, cradling her cup of tea and watching the operator work quietly and diligently, “I only remember saying hello to her a few times, but for some reason, she feels so familiar to me.”

She looked over at Natsu, who was stretched out faceup on Laurannei’s legs, and reached out to scratch the creature’s fluffy neck.

“Same with this one…”

I was feeling the exact same thing as Asuna. In fact, I was starting to feel like the platform operator was supposed to have another name.

“…You know her, don’t you, Alice?” I asked.

The knight nodded. “Yes, when I lived in the cathedral, I rode on her platform once every few days at least and sometimes gave her treats for her trouble. But…she seems a bit different from the operator I remember.”

“Hmm…and you, Eolyne?” I asked. The pilot commander, who had been sitting politely across from me, suddenly lifted his head in surprise. Behind the white leather mask that covered the upper half of his face, his green eyes blinked rapidly.

“Sorry…I wasn’t listening.”

“Oh, no, I’m sorry for throwing it to you out of nowhere. Did you know about her, too, Eolyne?”

“Er, no, of course not,” he said, shaking his head, then took his commander’s hat off and rested it on his knees. His wavy flaxen hair shone in the sunlight coming through the windows high on the wall. “I didn’t even know that anyone was living in the sealed floors of Central Cathedral. How is she getting food and water up here…?”

“That’s a good question…”

Even if she had a major stockpile of supplies, the water and food ingredients would reach the end of their life within the span of two centuries. But out of all the questions and concerns in my head, that one was not very high on the list.

I kept nursing my cofil to keep my impatience at bay, and after ten minutes, the operator returned from her task and knelt formally on the blanket.

“Would anyone like to freshen up their cofil?” she asked.

I was going to decline, but Stica raised her hand first.

“Oh, I’ll have some! This cofil is really, really delicious!”

“C’mon, Sti, don’t be presumptuous,” scolded Laurannei, much to Stica’s glee.

“Oh, sure, Laura, but the first thing you did after you took a sip was make that Oooh, nummy! face.”

“Wha…?! I don’t talk like that!”

For one fleeting moment, I thought I detected the faintest hint of a smile crossing the platform operator’s lips. But it was gone just as quickly. In her calm, reserved manner, she stated, “This cofil is known as Moonlit Evening. It was developed by the Star Queen. As far as I am aware, it is not grown anywhere in the Underworld except for this very place.”

“Meaning, in the Cloudtop Garden?” Stica asked, looking around.

The operator shook her head. “No, on the ninety-fifth floor.”

“…The Morning Star Lookout…”

It was Alice. I recalled that name as well. It was the one place in the hundred-floor Central Cathedral where the walls were open to the outside. If not for that place, Alice and I would not have been able to get back inside the tower after we fell from this floor.

More than the ninety-fifth floor, however, I was curious about the mention of the Star Queen’s strain of tea leaves. I glanced at Asuna, who didn’t seem to be skeptical about this information at all. She took another sip of cofil and beamed at the operator.

“It’s really very good. And I love the name: Moonlit Evening.”

“…The Star Queen said she took the name from a tanka she read in the real world a very long time ago.”

I was just marveling at how natural the word tanka sounded, coming out of her mouth, when Asuna said, “I had a feeling that was the case. See, Kirito?”

“S-see what?”

“I think we have to admit that it’s true.”

“Wh-what’s true?”

“That I’m the Star Queen, and you’re the Star King.”

“……”

I was surprised to see that Eolyne, Stica, Laurannei, and even Alice and the operator were staring at me keenly. The only one present who wasn’t curious about my reaction was Natsu, who was soundly sleeping on Laurannei’s lap.

“…And, um, what part of this conversation made you think of that…?” I pressed.

Asuna stretched and quoted the poem: “Like a shadow cast by the first rays of the morning sun after a moonlit evening, I am rendered insubstantial by the thought of you.”

She received a round of applause with some measure of bashfulness.

“That’s a tanka poem from the eleventh book of the Man’yoshu, but the writer is unknown, and it’s not one of the more famous poems. I really like it, though, and I’ve always had it memorized for some reason.”

“So you’re saying…it’s extremely unlikely that anyone other than you would choose a term from that poem to name their strain of cofil tea?”

Asuna’s head bobbed. I surveyed the other faces staring in our direction, then said, “Fine. I’ll admit it, then. I guess the Star King who ruled the Underworld up until thirty years ago was me, after all.”

Immediately, Stica and Laurannei broke into huge, excited smiles. Eolyne just shrugged, as if to say, Now he admits it.

“But let me be clear…Just because I’m acknowledging it doesn’t mean Asuna and I remember it. So, um…” I looked to the platform operator and asked her, “Sorry…you had another name, right?”

She straightened up, seemingly prepared for this very question, and said, “Yes. My name is Airy.”

Eolyne’s shoulders twitched, I thought. But he said nothing, so I glanced at the girl again and repeated, “Airy…”

Despite having never heard it before, it just felt right, as though she couldn’t have had any other name. I repeated it once more in my head, then asked, “Why are you here? Why aren’t you frozen the same way these three are…?”

“Because I wished for it to be that way,” Airy said without missing a beat. She took a sip of cofil and then began to tell her story.

It was the year 441 when the second commander of the Human Unification Council’s

sacred artificers brigade, Selka Zuberg, as well as the Integrity Knights Tiese Schtrinen Thirty-Two and Ronie Arabel Thirty-Three were put to rest here…sixty years after the creation of the Unification Council.

That was the year the traditional Integrity Knighthood was disbanded and replaced by the new Integrity Pilothood. The knights were allowed to choose between transferring to the new order, quitting to live their lives freely, or undergoing the Deep Freeze art.

But it was not a knight who first requested to be petrified. It was Lady Selka, the commander of the sacred artificers brigade. It was the original commander, Ayuha Furia, who took decades to analyze and decipher the lost art of Deep Freeze. Lady Selka took over that work, and Lady Tiese’s children were fully grown by then; they said that Lady Selka would be lonely on her own, and joined her in her deep sleep.

Some of the knights chose to transfer, and some chose to start a new life, but many of them wished to be frozen, too. After some time had passed, in the year 475, Lady Fanatio, the longest-serving at the royal side, entered eternal slumber…and three years after that, the Royal Highnesses entrusted all their authority to the Human Unification Council and retired from the throne.

I believe even you pilots know what happened next. In the year 480, the Human Unification Council was renamed the Stellar Unification Council, and the Human Era calendar was renamed the Stellar Era calendar. That same year, everything from the eightieth floor of Central Cathedral and up was sealed, so no one could enter aside from the king and queen, and myself and Natsu.

From that point on, the Star King and Queen led a very relaxed and dignified life, but they, too, went to their eternal rest. I witnessed them disappear after being engulfed in light in Stellar Year 550. As they instructed me, I informed the Stellar Unification Council that they had left the Underworld, and I passed on the message that His Highness left behind. I have minded this place in the thirty years since, keeping it ready for the moment my masters returned.

“…Lady Alice, Lady Asuna, Lord Kirito. I say again…welcome back.”

With her long, long explanation concluded, Airy placed her hands atop her lap and bowed deeply.

Asuna shot to her feet without warning. She made her way around the cofil pot and kettle stand in the middle of the blanket, then went down on a knee before Airy, thrust her hands out, and clutched the girl’s thin body against her own.

“I’m sorry…I’m so sorry, Airy. You must have been so lonely, all by yourself…for thirty years…”

It was all I could do to stifle the urge to repeat Asuna’s action. Inwardly, I cursed the Star King, my former self, for putting Airy through this cruel, solitary ordeal.

But just as quickly, Airy replied, “No, Lady Asuna. As I said a moment earlier…all of this was by my own insistence.” She placed her hands gently on Asuna’s shoulders. “They instructed me to sleep anywhere in the cathedral I desired, but I would not be able to respond to unforeseen events that way, and most importantly, there would be no one left to welcome back all three of you if you should return.”

“Welcome us…?” Asuna repeated indignantly. Airy gently pushed her shoulders back.

“Lady Asuna, I was blissfully happy to have served you and Lord Kirito. You made my dreams come true…so of course I would remain here to wait while you were gone. I was not lonely. I had Natsu to keep me company, thanks to Lady Ronie.”

The moment she said its name, Natsu perked its head up from Laurannei’s lap and cried, “Kyrrr!”

The girls giggled at the way the rodent seemed to be confirming her statement. Asuna was feeling calmer, too, and with a gentle nod, she let go of her grasp around the other girl’s back. She didn’t return to me, however, but sat down at Airy’s side.

Just as things were feeling relaxed and casual again, Eolyne broke his silence with a nervous question. “If you’ll pardon my asking…are you the original yardmaster of the Integrity Pilothood’s Dragoncraft Yard One, Airy Trume…?”

It took me a few moments to realize what “dragoncraft yard” meant. It was most likely the factory where they constructed the fighter jets that Laurannei and Stica flew. And Airy was the original yardmaster? Was Trume her last name?

Another thought occurred to me: Airy had traded words with Eugeo two centuries ago. Eolyne was wearing a mask, but he had an almost identical face, hair, and voice. It was strange that, unlike Alice, she had no reaction to him at all.

I waited with bated breath for her response. Airy grinned faintly and replied, “There was a time when I held that role…but all I did was tell everyone at the yard the things I learned from my master. Please just call me Airy.”

“I could never…If it were not for you, Lady Trume, my grandfather told me that it would have taken another thirty years to develop and deploy mass-produced crafts,” Eolyne insisted.

She blinked slowly, as though seeing the distant past against the back of her eyelids, and said simply, “It was very, very long ago.”

I was curious what she felt, talking to Eolyne, and I was also curious about Eolyne’s grandfather—the father of Orvas Herlentz, chairman of the Stellar Unification Council—but the day would be over before I finished asking every last question that came to mind. The Underworld was not under any kind of time acceleration at the moment, so every tick of the second hand here was also a second passing in the real world.

Over there, it was Saturday, October 3rd, so there was no school, but Dr. Rinko Koujiro from Rath had instructed us to log out by five o’clock at the very latest. The eleven-thirty bells had just rung earlier, so we had another five and a half hours of time to go. Could we travel to Admina as Eolyne had requested and find the person who tried to kill Stica and Laurannei in that span of time?

At any rate, we’d learned the reason that Selka, Ronie, and Tiese were frozen here, and that Airy was taking care of them, so I decided it was time to move on from the topic.

“Um, Airy…I want to thank you for carrying out this very important job. It’s very frustrating that I have no memory of being the Star King, and I feel bad about it, but all the same, I’m very happy to see you again.”

“I am, too, my lord,” she said, smiling furtively. I sidled a few inches closer along the ground to reveal the reason we were here.

“Now, as you may have figured out already…we’re back in the Underworld to help awaken Alice’s sister, Selka. And Tiese and Ronie, of course. Do you know how to do that?”

“I do,” Airy said. Alice promptly exhaled with relief, then collected herself and looked stern again.

“Miss Airy, what is this method? Is it a sacred art…?”

“Yes. However…as much as it pains me to tell you, the entirety of the Deep Freeze art that Lady Ayuha and Lady Selka restored remains strictly sealed and kept somewhere else.”

“Somewhere else, meaning outside the cathedral…somewhere in Centoria?”

“No. It is not in the human realm or the dark realm or on the outer continent, even. The sealed chest is hidden on the planet Admina.”