The Territories would certainly be a much fiercer battle than any before. But they had to win. For Niko’s sake, for Cerberus’s sake…and for the sake of all the Burst Linkers who had helped and guided Haruyuki up to that point.
“…ta. Arita.”
Feeling a tap-tap on his shoulder, Haruyuki opened his eyes in surprise.
Standing there was Mayu Ikuzawa, all ready to go home. When she met Haruyuki’s eyes, she giggled and bent over to murmur, “I’ll probably mail you a bunch of stuff about the election over summer break, so please and thank you.”
“Oh y-yeah, of course.”
“’Kay, see you!” She headed off in a trot.
“Yeah. S-see you.” He watched her slip out the door.
“And what was that?”
The voice came down upon him from behind, and he turned around nervously to find Chiyuri, also finished packing up to leave. She looked down on him suspiciously, and he unconsciously replied, “N-not that.”
“What’s ‘not that’?”
“Oh. Uh. That was just official stuff…like logistics…Anyway, uh, where’s Taku?”
“He already went to practice. He said he’ll come straight to your place when the meeting’s over.”
“Oh, o-okay.” He bobbed his head up and down and then stood up to pack his things. The time was 11:40 AM. The Legion members were meeting at the Arita house at noon, so if he didn’t head home soon, he wouldn’t make it in time. “O-okay, let’s hurry, Chiyu!”
“Now look! You were the one doing logistics or ballistics or whatever with the class rep!”
“Whoa! Look at the time!”
“Come on! Don’t try to slip out of this!”
They stepped out of the classroom, and when he changed into his sneakers at the shoe lockers, he tried to step toward the entrance, but Chiyuri yanked on his collar.
“Hey! You’re forgetting your indoor shoes!”
“Ah…O-oh, right.” He put his shoes in the plastic bag he’d brought for that purpose, shoved it into his school bag, and jumped outside.
The burning sunlight of midsummer poured down from the pure-blue sky and burned his eyes.
11
Kuroyukihime—Black Lotus
Fuko Kurasaki—Sky Raker
Utai Shinomiya—Ardor Maiden
Akira Himi—Aqua Current
Chiyuri Kurashima—Lime Bell
Shihoko Nago—Chocolat Puppeter
Satomi Mito—Mint Mitten
Yume Yuruki—Plum Flipper
Rin Kusakabe—Ash Roller
These nine girls were supposed to be the only attendees of the real meeting/dinner party that started at noon, with Takumu joining them later. However, Haruyuki, hectic with welcoming one girl after another, suddenly noticed an anomaly once they were all finally settled in the living room.
As people got carried away chatting on the sofa set and at the dining table, he started counting them on his fingers from where he stood in the entrance to the kitchen. “One, two, three…” And then again. And then one more time still.
“……?!”
He very nearly screamed but then clamped both hands over his mouth. There are ten people!!
He was sure of it. Five directly in front of him. Five on the balcony side. He pulled back into the kitchen and listed up everyone in his mind to see if he’d somehow forgotten one of their number, but no matter how he racked his memory, he could only come up with nine people.
Then the voice of Chocolat Puppeter—Shihoko Nago—rang out from the living room. “I’ll bring more tea, okay?!”
Her footsteps preceded her, and then the girl herself appeared in the kitchen. He had no sooner met her eyes than he was quickly beckoning her with one hand. She approached with a curious expression.
“Choco, this is bad,” he whispered. “There are ten people!”
“Huh? What does that matter?”
“There should only be nine! The extra person has to be some kind of social engineering thing from another Legion!”
“Social—” She raised an eyebrow. “What’s that, Crow?”
“Um, like hackers and crackers making direct contact with a target in the real world and taking their info— No, no, this is not the time to talk about that.” He shook his head from side to side.
“Huh?” Shihoko frowned with sudden realization. The hair tied on both sides of her head swung as she whispered, “Weird. Didn’t Kuroyuki tell you?”
“Huh? What?”
“I called her last night, though.”
“Uh? What?” Haruyuki leaned forward, but before Shihoko could answer, Kuroyukihime called from the living room.
“Haruyuki, come here a moment!”
“Oh…Um…O-okay…” Unable to say no, he nervously stepped out of the kitchen and moved forward at a snail’s pace, his guard up.
“Sorry for not telling you.” Kuroyukihime smiled mischievously. “I just wondered when you’d notice. The truth is I came with a secret guest.”
“A-a guest?” Relaxing now that it seemed like no hostile covert operator had gotten the jump on them, he moved to a spot beside Kuroyukihime on the sofa and checked the faces of the girls’ squad in turn. And found that there was indeed one face he didn’t know, seated in between Chiyuri and Satomi Mito.
From the look of her, she was older—maybe in the same grade as Fuko. Her pale-blue, short-sleeved sailor-style uniform was a design he’d never seen before. Her longish front bangs were cut asymmetrically, and a fairly mysterious air hung around her. There was no smile on her pale lips.
“Uh. Um.” Haruyuki dipped his head, feeling a little pressure. “It’s nice to meet you. I’m Nega Nebulus’s Haruyuki Arita— Oh! My avatar name is Silver Crow.”
The girl in the sailor uniform returned the bow, her diagonal bangs shifting, and gave her own name in a husky voice that suited her very well. “Hello, Silver Crow. I’m Rui Odagiri.”
“Odagiri…” He’d never heard the name before, either. But he felt like he’d met her somewhere before and furrowed his brow. This sense of déjà vu exploded into tiny pieces the instant she spoke again.
“My avatar name is Magenta Scissor.”
“………”
“Whaaaaa—?!” Haruyuki shrieked and started to fall over, but anticipating this reaction, Kuroyukihime held him up with a hand and set him on his feet once more. He turned back to her and cried, flapping his hands, “K-Ku-Kuroyukihi—! M—! M-Ma-Magmagmag—”
“Mmm. Speaking of magic, mixed rice is always such a neat trick. Might be nice for lunch,” Kuroyukihime said.
“Sounds good,” Fuko agreed. “Myoga, edamame, perilla leaves, very summery.”
“Oh! That sounds yummy! Let’s shred some fish and throw that in, too!” Chiyuri raised her hand.
UI> AND NOW IT SEEMS THAT I’M HUNGRY came the comment from Utai, and by this time, Haruyuki had finally succeeded in rebooting his brain.
“M-Maga-Coba—I mean, Magenta, what are you doing here?!” he shouted once more.
Finally, the girl who had given her name as Rui Odagiri moved her mouth, the corners climbing into a coquettish smile, something she did indeed share with the scissor-wielding avatar. “Your character is exactly the same as it is over there, hmm, Silver Crow?”
“Ah…Uh, i-is it?”
“The reason I’m visiting you today is because Choco and the girls scouted me.”
“Oh. I-is that what happened? …But like, wait. S-scouted?!” He whirled around to stare at Shihoko, who had emerged from the kitchen.
Shihoko, who had previously fought fierce battles against Magenta, laughed sheepishly when she met Haruyuki’s eyes.
“Um, well, not to get ahead of things here, but we went to Setagaya Number Five to see Magenta and ask her to come fight with us,” Yume, formerly the brains of the Petit Paquet organization, announced as she looked over the frame of her glasses. “There was a bunch of stuff in the middle there, but that’s how it turned out.”
“Hey, h
eeeey!” Shihoko shouted, running over to give Yume a chop on the head.
“Ouch!”
“C’mon, Yume! Don’t skip the important bits! I tried super-hard out there!”
“……?”
Haruyuki cocked his head to one side curiously, and Magenta/Rui smiled.
“Choco challenged Avo and me all by herself when we were tag teaming and got a win by decision.”
“W-wow!” He could only be obediently surprised at this. Chocolat Puppeter was level five while Magenta Scissor was six, and Avocado Avoider was also five. A solo victory over a tag team with an added-together level of double hers was nothing other than a truly spectacular achievement.
But Shihoko laughed with embarrassment once more as she shook her head. “Uh-uh. The truth is, I just fought Avocado one-on-one. But I feel like that was the first time I’ve worked so hard in a solo duel.”
“You did…So wait. Avocado isn’t here…?” Haruyuki shifted his gaze from Shihoko.
“Unfortunately, Avo can’t move away from Setagaya,” Rui replied, shaking her lustrous black hair. “He’s been in the hospital for a long time now.”
“Hospital…,” Haruyuki murmured.
Rui glanced at him before turning to Satomi next to her. “I think you would know it, Mint. There’s that big hospital right next to Kinuta Park, right?”
“Oh. Right.” Satomi nodded. “The place where they treat children.”
“Right. Originally, it was called the National Children’s Hospital, but now it’s the National Center for Child Health and Development. That’s where Avo and I met,” Magenta Scissor said.
Utai began to move her fingers quickly. UI> I WENT MYSELF A NUMBER OF TIMES FOR TESTS FOR APHASIA.
“So then, maybe I just missed you there, Maiden,” Rui replied, a faint smile crossing her lips, and then continued. “Avo’s disease isn’t the life-threatening kind. But I can’t actually be the one to tell you what it is. He’s really dying to meet all the Nega Nebulus members, so I’d love it if you’d come to Setagaya Five at some point.”
“Yes. Of course. At the time, we’ll invite him to join the Legion as well,” Kuroyukihime replied, and Rui dipped her head in thanks.
Staring at all this, Haruyuki absolutely couldn’t help but think that the fact that they met in the hospital meant that Rui, too, had a reason for getting treatment or being hospitalized there.
As if reading his mind, Rui turned her gaze on him. The diagonal cut of her bangs almost completely covered her right eye, so that only her left eye shone with a strong light. Smiling once again, she parted her lips. “A few years ago, a small-scale Legion was born at the National Center for Child Health and Development. More than a few kids hospitalized or getting treatment there had had to wear a Neurolinker since soon after they were born because of their illnesses. I did, too.”
She cut herself off there for a moment and looked down at her own hands.
“I have what’s called Gertsmann syndrome. My own symptoms are finger agnosia and left-right disorientation. So basically, I have a hard time distinguishing my own fingers, and I don’t understand left or right. With my Neurolinker, I can display a mark on my fingers and hands, but even so, I’ve had the thought a million times: Just one hand would be fine; just one finger would be good—and yet.”
Haruyuki looked at Rui’s slender hands and then suddenly noticed that her right wrist was encircled by a zigzagging scar. It was almost like she had tried to cut off her hand with a large pair of scissors.
“You said that you hate pairs of things that are one, Magenta…Is that why?” Unconsciously, Haruyuki gave voice to this question. In his heart, he panicked that he’d gone and asked something rude, but the look on Rui’s face didn’t change as she nodded.
“There’s that, too. Chopsticks, shoes, scissors…And human arms create a left-right just by existing there. I mean, when I was taught how to use chopsticks at daycare, I was told to put the right chopstick between the index finger and thumb, middle finger of my right hand—and the left chopstick between my thumb and middle finger, ring finger…Just hearing that, I thought I’d lose my mind.”
Chuckling, she laid her hands in her lap and continued quietly.
“So when I got Brain Burst from a kid I knew at the hospital, and my own duel avatar had arms and fingers like normal, I was a little disappointed. But…the most disappointing thing was that the Burst Linkers besides me picked on Avo, who was the last to join us, because of his appearance. I thought, well, this is just the same as the outside world. But I didn’t have the power to stop them; they were all higher level than me. So I got ahold of the ISS kits…and drove all the Burst Linkers at the treatment center to total point loss, including my parent and Avo’s.”
The entire group listened silently to Rui’s monologue. The internal strife and collapse of a small-scale community was absolutely not unheard of in the Accelerated World. But she hadn’t simply let the situation unfold; she’d sought power of her own will and used it.
“I don’t regret doing that. But…you all surpassed the power of the ISS kit, when I thought they could change the Accelerated World. So I want to keep an eye on your fight until the end. And if you’ll permit me, I’d like to fight again, alongside you this time. Of course…that is if you’ll have me after I did those things…”
Even after Rui closed her mouth, no one moved to say anything for a while.
Haruyuki slowly looked over at Rin, seated the furthest away from Rui at one end of the dining table. Her older brother Ash Roller had been forcibly parasitized with an ISS kit at Magenta Scissor’s hand the day before the school festival last month. In order to save Rin suffering from the mental interference from the kit, Ash had been prepared to even be banished from the Accelerated World with the Judgment Blow.
Before the mental interference could become that serious, however, they had managed to destroy the main kit body, albeit with some difficulty, but there was no doubt that it had been rough on Rin and Ash. How would Rin take what Magenta Scissor was saying here?
Then Rin lifted her head finally, having kept it down all this time, and looked at Haruyuki. Her usual gentle smile rose up on her face, and she nodded slowly before turning and taking a deep breath.
“Taking an ‘over’ thing and making it a ‘forever’ thing is basic ‘nothiiiiiing’!!”
Her sudden shout made everyone present jump. Rin, her cheeks colored with embarrassment, shrank back into herself and continued in a thin voice, “…Is what my brother would say. I think. It’s true my brother. Ash Roller. Did fight Magenta Scissor and was forced to equip the ISS kit. But I think he felt. Something through the parallel. Circuits of the ISS kit. The feelings of the ones who. Sought the ISS kit power themselves. Utan, Olive…and Magenta Scissor and them.”
Rui Odagiri didn’t know the mysterious connection between Ash Roller and Rin Kusakabe, but she lowered her face without asking a single question. She looked down at her right hand with its faint scars and gently closed her fingers.
“If you have ten Burst Linkers, you have ten ways to be right,” Kuroyukihime suddenly said in a resolute voice. “My master, Graphite Edge, always used to say that. At the time, I simply thought he was putting on airs again and let it go in one ear and out the other…But now, I think that might actually be the case. It goes without saying that my ‘right,’ aiming as I am for level ten, is nothing other than ‘wrong’ to the other kings…And the actions of the White King and the Acceleration Research Society, which we believe to be wrong, are perhaps unshakeably just to them. Yes…That’s why I have no intention of judging what you did as evil, Magenta Scissor. And all the more so if it was something you did not for your own profit, but for the sake of so many Burst Linkers.”
Hearing this, Rui bit her bottom lip hard. She closed her eyes, and a small valley was carved in between her eyebrows. She stayed like that for about three seconds, but then the tension quickly drained out of her body. Her face had the same cool expression—no, the lig
ht of a powerful will that hadn’t been there before shone in her left eye as she turned her whole body toward Kuroyukihime.
“Black King…Black Lotus. I want you to forgive me and let Avocado Avoider and me fight with you as Legion members.” Her head lowered, she raised her hands, and after what looked like a moment’s hesitation, she pushed her two hands out in front of her.
“I cannot forgive you,” Kuroyukihime announced quietly. “Because neither I nor my comrades have a single reason for you to seek forgiveness from us. In fact, we would gladly have you, Magenta Scissor. I would be delighted to have someone as dependable as you join our Legion as a comrade before the large battle we face.”
She smiled once more and took Rui’s hands with her own, gripping them tightly.
Head still lowered, her long bangs hung forward to obscure Rui’s face, but even so, Haruyuki could see that her thin lips were pursed like she was holding something back. Haruyuki felt certain at least that whatever it was, it wasn’t anger or sadness.
Once the Legion membership procedures were taken care of through a normal duel between Kuroyukihime and Rui Odagiri via the Arita home net—he wasn’t sure if it was a relief or a regret that there was no actual fighting in order to conserve their strength—the entire party got to work on lunch.
With the ten girls and one boy, and then Takumu joining them at one for a total of twelve people, it was their largest dinner table so far.
“There’s a ton of frozen pizza,” Haruyuki proposed in earnest.
But Chiyuri immediately rejected that idea. “Now look, I’m totally in the mood for mixed rice now!”
“Y-you are…But I mean, just rice…”
“Well, that’s true.” She thought for a second. “If we make onigiri out of the mixed rice, then we’re fine with another side dish and some kind of soup. I mean, it is just lunch. Ui, what do you think would be good?”
UI> LET’S SEE. FOR THE SOUP, HOW ABOUT A SUMMERY JAPANESE-STYLE BROAD BEAN POTAGE?
“Oooh, the elementary kids these days know some stylish recipeeees!” Chiyuri caught Utai from behind and pinched her cheeks with both hands.
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