Sword Art Online - Volume 27 - Chapter 2

2

My eyes fluttered open, revealing a metallic ceiling with panel lighting kept on low output.

It was the STL room at Rath’s Roppongi office. The Soul Translator’s headblock was already opened, rather than enclosed around my head like usual.

Slowly, gently, I sat up from the gel bed. Nearby, I could see Alice in her uniform, resting on a makeshift reclining chair. She hadn’t fully awakened yet; her eyes were shut, and she was not stirring.

Past her was the other STL table, where Asuna, dressed in the special gown for full-dive use, lifted her arms and stretched. When she noticed me looking at her, she grinned guiltily and murmured, “Good job in there, Kirito.”

“Same to you, Asuna.”

I got down from the bed, grabbed a bottle of mineral water from the wheeled cart along the wall, and took it back to Asuna. I loosened the cap and handed it to her, which she thanked me for and then proceeded to gulp down.

The sight of her drinking made me suddenly, acutely aware of my own thirst. Looking back at the day, I had left home at five in the morning and started my dive into the Underworld after seven, so I hadn’t had a bite to eat or a drop to drink for ten whole hours. Dr. Koujiro had given us that hard deadline because staying in an unbroken dive for any longer would require an IV for fluids.

I opened another bottle and drank nearly half of it in one go before pulling away for air. With my thirst taken care of, the next thing to make itself known was my hunger; unfortunately, there was no food on the cart, as it wasn’t allowed in the room.

It was times like this that I envied Alice’s mechanical body. She didn’t need food or water, although she surely had plenty of physical problems that I didn’t know about instead.

While these ideas and more trickled through my head, I reached down for my bag on the bottom tray of the cart and took out my phone. The moment the facial recognition system turned the screen on, Yui appeared on it.

“Papa, Mama, you’re done with your long dive!”

“Thanks for waiting for us, Yui,” I replied, and pointed the phone at Asuna. She smiled and waved. “Thank you for keeping watch for us, Yui. No problems, I hope?”

“That’s right. There were no attempts to hack Rath’s internal network. And no suspicious people or objects turned up on the security cameras.”

“I’m glad. We were able to relax and focus on our dive thanks to you, Yui.”

“Eh-heh-heh,” she giggled. “Well, I’m going to return to Unital Ring now. I’ll talk to you later, Papa and Mama!”

“Say hi to everyone for us,” I said, turning the screen back to me.

Yui replied, “I will!” and vanished.

Once my phone was back in the bag, I had a sudden thought, and turned to the reclining chair. Alice’s eyes were still closed. We should have logged out at the same time, I thought apprehensively.

Asuna was clearly thinking the same thing. “She’s not waking up yet?”

“Yeah…it’s been nearly three minutes. I wonder if there was connection trouble…”

“I don’t suppose there’s any point to shaking her,” Asuna said, but got up from the bed and walked toward the reclining chair anyway. Just before her outstretched hand touched Alice’s shoulder, however, the sound of the sliding door’s motors interrupted her.

The figure of Dr. Koujiro, white lab coat and all, entered the room—along with one other person.

“Kirigaya, Asuna, welcome back. Have you rehydrated yet?” she asked.

I held up the bottle of water in my hand. “Yeah. I’m sorry that I couldn’t log out before five o’clock, though.”

“That’s what happened the last time. I had a feeling.” She shrugged.

“Rinko,” Asuna said, “Alice hasn’t woken up yet. Did something happen…?”

“Oh, it’s not that. Since the three of you didn’t come back by five o’clock, I figured that something important was happening in there, so he and I decided that we should allow her to continue the dive,” Dr. Koujiro said, throwing a glance over her left shoulder.

Standing behind her was a tall man wearing the stylish combination of a cool linen jacket and banded collar shirt, plus rimless glasses with slightly tinted lenses. Every time I met him, he seemed to have a wildly different style, but while he always seemed nice at first, that mysterious smile never changed.

“Heya, Mr. Kikuoka. What are you doing here?” I asked.

Seijirou Kikuoka—who was sometimes a member of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, sometimes part of the Self-Defense Force, but actually something even more mysterious than that—went from a smile to a grimace. “Come on, I’m the founder of Rath. It shouldn’t be that surprising that I’d be here.”

“From what I hear, you delegated the public role to Rinko and just mooch around all the time instead.”

“Now, mooch is such a dirty word…,” Kikuoka protested, spreading his hands theatrically.

Asuna gave him a little bow. “It’s good to see you again, Mr. Kikuoka.”

“Ah yes. What’s it been, about two months? I’m glad you’re looking well.”

“Thank you. How has your recovery been, Mr. Kikuoka?”

“I got the all clear quite a while back. The only thing left is some scarring.”

While it sounded like a friendly back-and-forth, I could sense a kind of nervous tension beneath their words. Asuna once said that she thought Kikuoka belonged to a category “between good and not-so-good people.” And Kikuoka seemed to be slightly defensive, either because he felt guilty about continuing to get us into messes or for some other reason I wasn’t privy to.

At least this was the real world, where Asuna couldn’t physically string Kikuoka up by various body parts, I thought ominously.

Dr. Koujiro clapped her hands briskly. “Now, let’s get you two ready to go home. Your families will worry if you’re too late returning.”

“Uh…don’t you want to hear about our dive?” I asked.

She glanced at the reclining chair. “I’ll hear about it from Alice later. I’m sorry to burden you while you’re tired after the long dive, but will you tell your story to Lieutenant—er, excuse me, to Mr. Kikuoka?”

“That’s fine, but it’ll take a lot longer than two or three minutes.”

“No worries,” stated Kikuoka, dangling a car key between his fingers. “I’ll be driving you and Asuna home, so we’ll have time in the car to talk. I’ve got some things to ask, too.”

“To ask, huh…?”

I gave him a suspicious glare, hoping he wasn’t about to dump more work on my lap. Kikuoka easily brushed aside the look and headed for the door.

“Once you’re done dressing and all that, take the elevator down to the garage on the second basement floor. See you there.”

The door slid open, then closed again.

Asuna turned back toward us and asked Dr. Koujiro quietly, “What is Mr. Kikuoka’s status now? On paper, did he still die on the Ocean Turtle?”

I had asked the exact same question before the dive this morning. Dr. Koujiro had brushed me off by saying I should ask him myself, but I hoped that maybe this time she would answer seriously.

“Well, I could tell you, but I think you’ll assume I’m just joking to get you off my back…”

“I won’t assume that!” Asuna claimed.

The doctor gave me a look of emphasis before saying, “Reizaburou Kikuoka.”

“Huh?” Asuna and I said in unison. I shared a look with Asuna, then asked, “Wh-who is that…?”

“Seijirou’s twin brother.”

“…Mr. Kikuoka has a brother…? So is he borrowing his identity, then?” Asuna wondered aloud.

But Dr. Koujiro just looked as exasperated as she had ten hours ago and shook her head. “No, he doesn’t exist. Higa modified a municipal registry, the regional bureau’s duplicate registry, and the national census to create a brother for him out of thin air.”

“…”

We were speechless. There were so many questions to ask—How did he do that? Isn’t that a crime?—but it seemed pointless to even bother.

Eventually, Asuna simply stated, “Well, I’ll get changed,” and walked behind a screen set up in the corner of the room. In less than a minute, she had changed from her diving gown into her regular clothes and returned. I had merely taken off my top layer to dive, so I didn’t need to change anything.

“Um…if possible, I’d like it if Alice could spend the night over there,” I suggested.

Dr. Koujiro nodded. “That was my plan. Make sure you get good sleep tonight, you two.”

“Thank you. I will.”

“Me too. Good-bye,” added Asuna, bowing. I bowed as well, then followed her out of the STL room.

We took the elevator down to the garage and emerged to see a car waiting for us. It was a midsize sedan in an inconspicuous color and style. I peered through the side window at the driver’s seat, where Kikuoka noticed me and pointed out the back seat on his left.

I opened the door and got in. I would have preferred to go ladies first, but Asuna was going to be dropped off before me, which would make getting out on the left side annoying.

Asuna got in after me and closed the door, which made a satisfying, heavy bumf. The logo on the steering wheel was from a Swedish manufacturer I recognized. As far as foreign cars went, this was clearly the kind that was unassuming but high-quality.

“Thanks for waiting,” I said from the back seat. “Knowing you, I was expecting a way sketchier-looking car.”

Kikuoka chuckled. “And I do drive a much sketchier car when I’m on my own time. But this is a Rath company car.”

“Oh, I see…”

This must have been Rinko’s choice, then, I imagined as I clicked the seat belt in. After confirming that Asuna had done the same, I said, “All right, take us away.”

“Thank you for the ride,” Asuna added.

Kikuoka put his hands on the wheel and said dryly, “All righty, then.” With a faint purr, the engine came to life. Despite being midsize, the nearly two-ton car hardly vibrated at all as it smoothly rolled forward. It reminded me of the heat-element mechamobile I rode in the Underworld.

The electric vehicle easily climbed the steep slope of the garage exit, then turned onto Art Museum Road and picked up speed. From here to Asuna’s home in Miyasaka, Setagaya Ward, it would take twenty minutes on Route 246—well, at this time of day, more like thirty.

Even that probably wouldn’t be enough time to relate all the information we’d gleaned from today’s dive, but I didn’t need to tell Kikuoka everything. He had asked me to identify the person who’d used the Seed conversion function to break into the Underworld. He didn’t need to know about Eolyne’s family situation, or the full recounting of how we’d unfrozen Selka and the others.

And yet we still had nothing that would connect to the actual intruder, I noted regretfully. Nevertheless, I busied myself trying to construct a mental synopsis of what had happened.

“Kirito, there’s a box on the passenger seat. Would you open it for me?” Kikuoka asked. Surprised, I glanced over the center console to the seat next to him. There was indeed a plain paper box, larger than a shoebox, resting on it. I reached over to pick it up and placed it on the back seat between Asuna and me.

If it were wrapped, I might’ve thought it was a three-day-late birthday present for Asuna, but there wasn’t so much as a single ribbon on it. Instead, someone had written Test 4 on it in black marker. The two of us shared a look, then I lifted the lid so we could see inside.

“Wha—?!”

“Whoa!!”

The contents were shocking.

Curled up in the midst of a ton of cushioning material was a kitten that couldn’t have been more than a few months old.

“Don’t put a cat in a box like this!” I snapped, reaching in with both hands to pick up the soft gray kitten. Just as quickly, I hunched in surprise. The kitten’s body was completely cold and hard. Just before I could shriek and let go, I realized that it wasn’t actually a corpse. For one thing, it was too heavy for a kitten this size, and there was something odd and wrong about the shape of its joints.

“Is this…fake?” I muttered.

Asuna was similarly in awe. She reached out timidly to touch the kitten’s back. “Oh…you’re right. What is this, Mr. Kikuoka?”

“A cat-type robot from the future,” he replied sardonically, referencing a certain famous character. “Just kidding. There’s a button under its right flank. Press and hold it.”

I brushed under the joint of the front right leg and found a round object poking out. Like he said, I pushed it in for a few seconds.

Out of nowhere, the kitten shook. Its closed eyes shot open, and it looked right at me.

“Meowww,” it cried adorably, but with a hint of protest. I hurriedly knocked the empty box onto the floor and lowered the kitten toward the seat between Asuna and me. It twisted and hopped off my hands onto the seat, where it stretched in a very natural motion, then looked up at Asuna.

“Mewww,” it mewled, clearly sucking up to her. Asuna’s eyes lit up. She scratched the kitten under its chin. The cat enjoyed it for a bit, then hopped onto Asuna’s lap and curled up. It even began to purr, just like a real cat.

I watched it for several seconds before leaning toward the headrest in front of me to ask, “Mr. Kikuoka, is that really a robot…?”

“You powered it on, didn’t you? It’s a pet robot test model, using the same CNT actuators—the artificial muscles—from Alice’s mechanical body. Higa put a lot of work into that one.”

“Really…No wonder I haven’t seen him in a while. He musta been workin’ on this thing,” I commented, then felt embarrassed that I had slipped into Higa’s way of speaking for a second. I added, “S-so is this his hobby? Or yours?”

“Come on, now. An incredible amount of money went into developing that model. Dr. Koujiro would beat me to a pulp if I were spending that kind of money on a ‘hobby,’” Kikuoka said uncomfortably. He turned the wheel right, and our electric vehicle smoothly pulled through an intersection in Nishiazabu.

As I expected, Roppongi Street was crowded on a Saturday evening, but not so much that we came to a stop. There was a large multidisplay nav map in the front that showed the traffic around Shibuya Station clearing up. We would be arriving at Asuna’s house by six after all.

But back to the robot kitten. Its fur was so realistic, it didn’t seem like it could be artificial. “If this isn’t for a hobby,” I murmured, “then what is it for…?”

“Are you turning it into a commercial product?” asked Asuna, stroking the kitten. My mouth fell open. Surely that won’t be it, I thought, but our driver had nothing but praise for her.

“Very perceptive of you, Asuna. That’s right…We’re aiming to bring it to market as soon as next year.”

“Whaaat? Rath’s going to sell these?” I asked, aghast.

Kikuoka rolled his eyes imperceptibly. “Of course not. We’re only doing the planning and development. The production and distribution will need to be done by a major manufacturer, a company like RCT Progress.”

My eyes snapped over to Asuna at the mention of that name. The daughter of RCT Progress’s former CEO just smiled and said coolly, “RCT Progress has sold pet robots in the past, so I’m sure they would have an interest. The negotiations would be very difficult, though.”

“Ha-ha-ha, I suppose they would be. But I’m confident that our robotic technology is the best in the world. One look at Yon-chan there will convince anyone of that.”

“Yon-chan…?”

Asuna and I shared another look. Rath’s robots started with Ichiemon and Niemon, the heroes of the Ocean Turtle, so I had to assume that “Yon-chan” was a nickname for Test Prototype Four here, as indicated by the writing on the box. Which uncreative bore was naming these poor robots?

No, don’t bother trying to figure that out, I told myself, and reached out to pet the curled-up Yon-chan on Asuna’s lap. When I had first touched it, the body was cold enough that I thought the cat was dead, but now that its machinery and battery were active, it felt slightly warm to the touch.

“Yeah, you could probably sell a lot of these…,” I whispered to myself.

Kikuoka overheard and said delightedly, “Right? And if Rath can acquire multiple sources of stable, independent income like this, we’ll have a better time counteracting the faction that wants the Underworld project scrapped.”

Well, if that was going to be the case, then the seemingly out-of-nowhere pet-robot development plan had earned my support. I looked at Kikuoka’s face through the rearview mirror and asked, “If the thing you wanted to talk to us about was this pet robot, it probably means you want us to do something for you, doesn’t it? What is it this time?”

In the mirror, I saw him grin.

“I’m glad you’re so perceptive.”

“That’s funny—I usually hear the opposite.”

“The thing is…Yon-chan there has pretty much hit all our goals on hardware. It’s the software that we’re having trouble with.”

“Really…?” Asuna asked, surprised. “But it seems so lifelike to me.”

I had to agree. The way it stretched and hopped onto Asuna’s lap was utterly believable. But Kikuoka just shook his head.

“Its reactions to human contact are fine. The problem is its spontaneous actions…If you program what to do from A to Z, the robot’s got no personality, and if you put AI in charge, it eventually stops acting like a real cat. Before we reset its learning data yesterday, Yon-chan was attempting to walk around on two legs.”

“……There might actually be some demand for that, though,” I muttered under my breath. “So what do you want us to do? I can’t imagine there’s anything we can do that Higa can’t.”

“Oh, I’m not asking you to do anything about Yon-chan. It’s just, er…Are there cats in the Underworld, too, Kirito?”

“Huh? Well, yeah…”

“Are they actually catlike?”

“They don’t walk around on two legs or bark like dogs, if that’s what you’re asking,” I said, then realized what he was getting at. “Wait…are you suggesting I bring a cat out of the Underworld with me?”

“Bingo,” he said, grinning again. In rapid-fire fashion, he stated, “At the time we started running the Underworld simulation, animals were just a simple program included in The Seed Package, but after five centuries of learning on internal time, they should have gained an advanced and highly polished complexity, I believe. I just can’t imagine how exactly the simulation has managed to make catlike cats and doglike dogs.”

His comments reminded me of Natsu, Airy’s long-eared wetrat friend. It wasn’t a cat, but a rat—more like a rabbit, even. But the way it grabbed nuts with both hands and chewed on them, then flipped around and squealed felt utterly natural, without a hint of artifice. Natsu was probably a special individual, but there were likely cats somewhere in that world that had reached the same level of advancement.

Kikuoka was presumably thinking that if I could export such a cat from the Underworld and load it onto Yon-chan’s body, the result would be an extremely advanced and believable robot cat. But…

“You make it sound like ‘bringing out a cat’ is simple. I assume you haven’t forgotten, Mr. Kikuoka—the Underworld servers are on the Ocean Turtle across the sea. I could dive from the Roppongi office, but I wouldn’t be able to bring a single rock back with me, much less a cat.”

“I haven’t forgotten that, of course,” Kikuoka said smoothly, pressing on the accelerator. We’d made it past the Shibuya Station vicinity, and the road ahead was open. The car sped up quickly, rushing up Route 246.

Once we were at speed, Kikuoka explained, “This is still only in the theoretical stage, but with Alice’s help, there is a possibility that we might be able to export small amounts of data from the Underworld. It just requires the use of the system console from the inside.”

“With Alice’s help…?” I repeated, baffled yet again.

Thankfully, Asuna’s sharp intuition came to my rescue. “Are you saying you mean to use Alice’s lightcube for storage?” she asked a bit reproachfully. I couldn’t blame her. While the idea was a clever solution, it was also not something I could get behind.

“That’s really pushing it, Mr. Kikuoka. Even assuming Alice’s lightcube has the space to store something like that, if anything damages her fluctlight in the process of writing the cat’s data, that harm is irrevocable,” I said.

“Of course, of course.” Kikuoka lifted his hands off the wheel briefly to make an apologetic prayer sign. He had clearly anticipated this reaction of ours. “We wouldn’t use Alice’s actual lightcube. The cranial shell in her head still has some space for storing a lightcube, so we’re looking into adding something like a supplemental memory bank there for her.”

“…That still sounds risky to me. You’re not thinking of ignoring Alice’s will and performing some kind of twisted experimentation on her, are you?”

“Of course not. In fact, this whole thing got started at her request.”

“Alice asked for this…?”

I was stunned. She had been in the real world for only two months. Why would she be requesting extra memory now?

Before I could ask, Kikuoka explained, “The reason Alice wanted it is not for me to say. You’ll have to ask her yourself. Getting back to the main topic, the thing I wanted to ask you two to do for me is to search for a clever-looking cat on your next dive into the Underworld.”

“We can certainly look for one,” Asuna said, “but if we bring it out to the real world, then it vanishes from the Underworld, doesn’t it? I would assume that its owner would be very sad.”

That was a very characteristically thoughtful comment from Asuna, but Kikuoka just shook his head. “No, that won’t happen. Underworlders with fluctlights cannot be brought to the real world without physically ejecting their lightcube from the Lightcube Cluster, but mobile objects like dogs and cats can simply be copied to regular media. Of course, the original would remain in the Underworld. It won’t even realize that it’s been copied,” he said with a smirk. “The problem is that we still can’t make that copy without going to the Ocean Turtle. But if we use the interior console and Alice’s supplemental memory bank, we think we can extract the data right from Roppongi.”

“…I see. Just one more question—if we do succeed in copying a cat’s data from the Underworld, are you going to write it to Yon-chan here?”

I stared at the back of Kikuoka’s head when he didn’t respond and thought, You’ve misjudged Asuna’s sense of empathy, Mr. Kikuoka. At the point that it jumped onto her lap so she could pet it, the Yon-chan in the car with us here became something Asuna wanted to protect and preserve.

But the former commander of Rath was a quick thinker. “Not quite. If you happen to find an appropriate cat program in the Underworld, we’ll place it in Prototype Five, which is still in development. Since you’re more likely to find an adult-sized cat, it’ll cause issues if we put that mind in Yon-chan’s kitten-sized body.”

“And what will you do with Yon-chan? Scrap it?” I lobbed, but Kikuoka gracefully deflected the blow.

“No, no, it’s still got room to develop, I think. On that topic, Asuna…would you like to keep Yon-chan and raise it?”

“Huh…? Me…?”

“You said that you don’t have any pets at home, didn’t you?”

“Yes…Because my family is often away, we wouldn’t be able to take care of one…”

“But Yon-chan doesn’t need to be fed or have its litter box cleaned. When there aren’t any people around, it’s designed to go into sleep mode and recharge. On the other hand, there’s a high chance that it will continue to exhibit uncatlike behavior, but I’ll leave it up to your judgment whether to reset its learning data. What do you say?”

“……”

Asuna stroked the sleeping kitten on her lap instead of answering. Even though it was only a robot, I could sense that she was feeling the pressure of being its potential owner and caretaker.

“Asuna, you don’t have to—,” I started to say, but she cut me off with a smile.

“Thank you, Kirito. I’m fine, though. I will take care of the cat for the time being, Mr. Kikuoka.”

“Ah, that’s wonderful. The manual and recharging pad are in the box. Also, this is still a company secret, so it would be great if you avoided showing Yon-chan to anyone outside the family.”

“Understood.”

I had to resist the urge to snap, Oh, but showing her family is okay? Asuna’s dad was the former CEO of RCT Progress, and her brother, Kouichirou, was an executive at the company, as I understood it. Of course, Kikuoka would be considering that as well. In fact, maybe showing the cat to them was part of his plan…

“Kirito, could you get the box?” Asuna asked, snapping me out of my thoughts. I reached down to put the paper box back on the seat. She apologized to the cat before pressing the switch to power it down and snuggling the curled-up robot kitten back into the box of packing material.

She popped the lid onto the box, then held the whole thing on her lap, smiling serenely. Seeing her reaction made me wonder if Yon-chan was actually just Kikuoka’s elaborate version of a birthday present for Asuna. It would be tasteless of me to ask, though.

Somehow, the car was already off Route 246 and on Setagaya Road. The Yuuki home was just out of sight.

“You’re probably tired, Asuna. Go to bed early tonight,” I whispered to her.

She looked at me skeptically. “You’re going in to check out how they’re doing, though, right?”

“Well, yeah…”

“Then I’m going in, too. It sounds like a lot has happened.”

“Okay. Well, don’t stay up too late.”

“Thanks, I won’t,” she said.

Just then, the car came to a stop, hazard lights blinking.

Asuna picked up the paper box, thanked Kikuoka for the ride, and got out. I moved over to the left seat so I could wave good-bye and watched her walk through the front gate of the house.

Once the sensor lights over the gate turned off, I faced forward again, leaning back against the leather seat. I clicked my seat belt and waited for the car to resume its drive.

From here to the Kirigaya home in Kawagoe, it would take at least an hour, even along the Kan-Etsu Expressway. The city lights shone dully on Kikuoka’s cheek. I said, “I could have asked earlier, but are you really driving me all the way home? You must have better things to do.”

“It’s part of my job,” he replied. For some reason, he pulled over to the side of the road and put on his hazard lights again. “Would you like to come sit in the front seat, Kirito?”

“…Well, sure, I guess…”

You could have asked me earlier, I thought, removing my seat belt so that I could get out of the car, open the passenger door, and get into the front seat and buckled in again. We drove west along a two-lane road through what seemed for all the world like a quiet, normal neighborhood.

Eventually, the road intersected with Metropolitan Route 8 by Chitose-Funabashi Station. A right turn there, and we could take the Nerima Interchange all the way to the start of the Kan-Etsu Expressway.

Fortunately, Route 8 was surprisingly empty for this time of day. Once I sensed that Kikuoka was settling in, I kept my eyes on the road and said, “Once they connect up that outer loop, it’ll make getting to and from downtown Kawagoe so much easier.”

“Absolutely. But at the current pace, I think it’ll take another five years.”

“Five years…”

It was my choice of conversation topic, but I was already reduced to a stunned silence. I couldn’t even imagine what I would be doing in 2031, five years from now.

Seemingly reading my mind, Kikuoka followed up with a question, like a kindly unc—er, cousin.

“By that time, you’ll be twenty-two…no, three? Have you decided on your future plans?”

“……”

I’d told Asuna and my parents about my plans to get a job with Rath, and Dr. Koujiro had somehow figured it out on her own, but I didn’t know if Kikuoka was aware. A careless answer might have unwanted consequences down the road, so I took a few seconds to consider.

“Well, I’d like to go to college.”

“Ah, so you’re not going the pro-gamer route.”

“L-listen…”

To tell the truth, though, it wasn’t such an absurd answer in this day and age. Even before full-diving came along, you had traditional gaming income sources like tournament prize money, streaming, and taking part in a pro team. And recently there were games like Gun Gale Online that allowed players to trade in-game currency for real money or earn virtual currency and tokens and the like.

Until my fourteenth birthday, there was a part of me that dreamed of being a pro gamer, too. But then…

“…I can’t make it as a pro,” I mumbled. I could sense Kikuoka’s eyes on my profile.

“Why do you say that? Setting aside whether you actually want to, I think you’ve got professional-level talent in any full-dive game.”

“You think too highly of me. Plus,” I said, hesitating. Finally, I admitted, “I don’t think I can reach that level of rabid fanaticism about an ordinary game anymore. I couldn’t fight until I threatened to burn out my very life force like I did in Aincrad and the Underworld, even if I wanted to. If I can’t reach that level of intensity, I don’t have the right to compete as a pro.”

Now it was Kikuoka’s turn to sit in silence.

He took his left hand off the steering wheel and held it up in the air, but ultimately did not say anything, electing to put it back on the wheel. He sighed softly, so quietly that I wouldn’t have heard it if the car had a combustion engine.

“…I see,” he murmured quietly and gravely. “In that case…I guess this mission has been a painful one for you…I suppose it’s brought up a lot of memories about what you experienced in the Underworld three months ago.”

“Actually…well, it brought up a lot of stuff,” I grumbled. That wasn’t what I wanted to say. “The things that happened there weren’t all bad. Besides, I was asking and asking Rinko if I could go back to the Underworld anyway.”

“That’s a relief to hear…but I’ll take your words to heart, Kirito. Now, it pains me to have to ask you this right now, but…”

“Don’t let it pain you. It’s about the intruder, right?”

“Yeah. Did you find any leads?”

“None,” I said, as simple as that.

Kikuoka froze for a few seconds. “Ah. I see. Well, the Underworld is the size of a continent, after all. It can’t be easy to search for a single person there.”

“These days, it’s actually around the size of two whole planets,” I corrected him. Over the next fifteen minutes, I explained the events of today’s dive. By the time I was done, we had turned off Route 8 to Mejiro Street. There was a ramp ahead of us leading to the Nerima Interchange.

Kikuoka drove up the hill and through the toll area, accelerating to sixty miles per hour. The electric car’s torque pushed my back against the seat, but this was positively gentle compared to the sheer force of the X’rphan Mk. 13’s max speed.

Once the car was cruising again, I peered at the info panel on the driver’s side. The battery life was still more than 80 percent. He would easily be able to drop me off in Kawagoe and drive all the way back to Roppongi without needing a charge. Then I realized that it was Saturday, so he might just drive home instead.

“Hey, what area are you living in now?” I asked casually.

Distracted, Kikuoka replied, “Huh? Oh…in Shinonome.”

“Shinonome…so, like, next to Ariake. Have you always been there?”

“No, only since I changed my name…Whoa, hey, anything more than that is top secret. If you want to know more, you have to join my syndicate,” Kikuoka joked, coming back to his senses. “Kirito,” he said seriously, “I just want to confirm a few things… First of all, is the Underworlders’ inability to break rules or laws still unchanged, even two centuries later?”

“Yeah, I believe so.”

I folded my fingers together and placed them between the back of my head and the headrest before explaining everything I knew about the topic.

“As usual, there isn’t a single piece of litter to be found on the streets of Centoria, and the traffic was smooth and orderly. I got the feeling that the captains and directors and whatever of the local police were kind of pushy and pompous, so it’s still not a utopia by any means.”

“Uh-huh…And the current ruling body of the Underworld is the Stellar Unification Council? Are they maintaining the same level of control as the old Axiom Church did?”

“Hmm. Well, the Axiom Church and Administrator were basically stand-ins for God, so it might be different in nature. The Stellar Unification Council probably isn’t worshipped or feared in the same way, but its control seems as firm as bedrock.”

“And yet there’s been sabotage of the Integrity Pilots—an arm of the Unification Council itself—and there’s an unaffiliated base on Admina where they were conducting illegal experiments?”

“Yeah, that’s the thing…”

I lowered my hands to rest on my chest this time. I thought back on the mysterious base we found on Admina and the enigmatic and beautiful Tohkouga Istar, dressed in black and called Your Excellency—and that was when I realized that I’d failed to pass along a crucial piece of information, or more like a theory, to Kikuoka.

“Wait, sorry. Earlier I said I didn’t have any leads on the intruder, but that’s not true.”

“Meaning?”

“This is just a supposition without any evidence behind it…but Eo…I mean, the commander of the Pilothood pointed out the possibility that the intruder from the real world might be connected to the sabotage of the Integrity Pilots.”

“Ahhh…” Kikuoka tapped the steering wheel with the fingertips of his left hand. “That commander must have a very flexible mind,” he exclaimed. “I did a lot of thinking about who the intruder might be, but I could only come up with foreign saboteurs or industrial spies after STL information.”

“I feel like it’s a logical leap, but the commander said that the God of Darkness, Vecta, who started the Otherworld War, was a real-worlder, so it’s not out of the question that the same thing could happen again…”

“…I see. That’s a good point. But…if so, that makes things even more complicated to untangle. If the intruder’s goal isn’t to gain access to the system console, but to interfere with the Underworld itself, it would suggest that they are very knowledgeable about the Underworld’s history, terrain, and social structure. I have a hard time imagining such a human being really exists,” Kikuoka muttered, half to himself.

“True,” I agreed, but soon realized that it wasn’t necessarily that simple. Rath’s staff could use the STL in Roppongi to dive into the Underworld and gather information, for example. I didn’t want to suspect people I’d met and was on good terms with, but the very man who had shot and wounded Kikuoka in the attack on the Ocean Turtle three months ago was a spy who had infiltrated Rath.

Of course, Kikuoka wouldn’t have overlooked that possibility. If he had already ruled it out, he had to have had a very good reason for doing so.

I realized that my shoulders had seized up at some point, so I made a point to relax them and stared out the window to the west. The last bit of sunlight was nearly gone, and a few tiny stars were glimmering in the sky, lonely and weak.

Déjà vu hit me at that very moment. Long, long ago, it seemed, I had once gazed at the stars from a vehicle moving at a steady speed, just like this. Well, of course I had; our family went out for the evening all the time when I was a little kid. But in my vague memories, it wasn’t Dad or Mom who was holding the steering wheel…

“Sun’s going down earlier, isn’t it?” Kikuoka said, drawing me out of my memories.

I blinked my recollections away and said, “Well, we’re past the midpoint of fall now.”

“Do you know what they call the day in the fall when the day and night are equal lengths, in English?” he asked suddenly. The question took me by surprise, but to my benefit, I had studied the names of that day in the fall and the spring, as well as the summer and winter solstices.

“It’s the autumnal equinox,” I said, with 98 percent confidence.

But Kikuoka made a brr-brrr buzzer sound.

“Wh-what…?”

“Sorry, but that’s the equinox itself. The day we observe on the calendar is called Autumnal Equinox Day.”

“Wh-what? That’s a total technicality!”

“And if you fall for trick questions like that, you’re never going to win at Rath’s trivia night.”

“…You have trivia nights?”

“You’ll have to come to the next one,” he said. I wasn’t sure if he meant it or not.

Kikuoka drove a little faster. People said that electric vehicles weren’t as good at high speed, but this one was handling sixty miles per hour without a hint of any unpleasant vibrations or noise. It was the polar opposite of my beloved two-stroke off-road bike, but this seemed pretty sweet in its own way.

I leaned back against the deluxe leather seat, listening to the faint road noise, and felt my eyelids getting heavier. But we weren’t done talking. There was more to be exchanged about the infiltrator’s identity…

“You can drift off to sleep,” Kikuoka said without looking at me. But if I actually fell asleep now, I’d feel like a little kid taking a nap.

“No, I’m fine,” I replied, trying hard to fight off sleep. But once my head was touching the headrest, it refused to pull off of it again.

Kikuoka must’ve done something to the computer system, because soft, slow jazz began to play quietly over the speakers. That was the clinching blow that sealed my fate, lulling my mind gently and slowly into darkness.