When they were done with their drinks, they moved to the stage at the rear of the class, and the eight girls took a commemorative photo by themselves in the normal AR animal costumes. Then, at Fuko’s instruction, everyone except Kuroyukihime and Chiyuri left the stage. Without a moment’s delay, the truly frightening Master Raker looked at Haruyuki and said with another wink, “Okay, go ahead, Corvus.”
This is an order. I can’t exactly go against my master’s orders. Haruyuki dug deep into the costume program menu and, abandoning all hope, changed the current selection of ANIMAL FUR SUITS to ANIMAL FUR SUITS S (aka sexy).
Onstage, Chiyuri and Kuroyukihime stared blankly for about two seconds, but the instant they realized that the surface area of the fur covering their bodies had decreased by 90 percent, they let out shrieks he’d never heard before.
“So, Haru.” Takumu turned toward Haruyuki at the tail end of their party as they headed for the entrance after leaving Animal Kingdom and pushed up the bridge of his glasses. “Did you get the photo?”
“Yeah. But it was erased in the forced direct connection…”
“It was…? What about recovering the data?”
“Not very likely. But I intend to try.”
“…Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”
“Got it. I’ll be in touch.”
As they talked in low voices, Chiyuri turned around and stared at them. “What’re you whispering about?”
““Nothing.”” The two male members of Nega Nebulus shook their heads in perfect unison.
Three o’clock.
Haruyuki and his friends heard the announcement of the end of the school festival in a corner of the front yard. Once again, applause rose from within the school and then faded out like the tide. The invited guests—mostly students’ friends and family—slipped through the front gates and chatted about the festival with smiles on their faces.
The next day, Monday, was cleanup, and the day after that, Tuesday, was a day off in lieu of Sunday. Once that was over, the special atmosphere of the school festival would disappear without a trace. He’d experienced this in seventh grade as well, but he didn’t think he’d be able to return to regular life so easily this year.
“Aaah, it’s over, huh?” Niko said, stretching both arms out, and then added as if a sudden thought had occurred to her, “You guys don’t have an after-party or anything now?”
Whaaat?! Haruyuki nearly shouted, but Kuroyukihime commented before he could.
“That’s a good idea…I’d like to say yes, but unfortunately, I have a number of things to take care of and won’t be leaving anytime soon. It’s impossible.”
“You don’t gotta come or anythin—”
“It’s. Im. Possible! Anyway, everyone’s tired today. If you don’t go home and get a good night’s sleep, tomorrow will be painful.”
“Tch! Whatevs.” Although Niko looked disgruntled, she followed this with a serious yawn.
Pard awkwardly picked up her Legion Master from behind. “We’ll head back to Nerima now. Thanksy. Stuff happened, but it was fun.”
“Pard, once again, congratulations on reaching level eight.” Longtime rival Fuko celebrated Pard’s leveling up and then asked, “So what should I call you in the real, I wonder?”
“Myah’s fine, Fu.”
“…Understood. Well then, I look forward to dueling you, Myah.”
“K.” Pard nodded.
“M’kay, next time, come to us!” Niko waved, and the two members of Prominence disappeared into the throng of people passing through the gates.
Fuko tugged on Rin’s hand and moved forward. “I’ll thank you one last time. Corvus, thank you for saving Rin and Ash.” She bowed her head deeply.
“Th-that’s— It wasn’t just me,” Haruyuki hurried to reply. “All of us worked hard to make it happen…And it was you and Kuroyukihime and the others who destroyed the main body and all.”
“But that all began because of your desire to help Rin.” Fuko smiled.
“Um.” Rin arranged her hands in front of her and bent deeply at the waist. “Me. And my brother. We both really, really. Really appreciate what. You did, Arita. I’ll do whatever. I can to pay you. Back. First, I want to. Materialize as soon. As possible, like. Master said.”
What? He was confused, but Rin bowed her head once more with watery eyes, so he simply said, “Me too. I’m really happy that you and, of course, Ash came back to us, Kusakabe. Tell your brother I’m looking forward to our next morning duel.”
“Yes. Of. Course!” Rin nodded.
“I have to thank you, too.” Akira stepped forward and turned to Haruyuki and the others. The ever-cool eyes beyond the red frames of her glasses softened as she continued. “Thanks for freeing me from the Castle. It’s like a dream to be able to fight with everyone in that world again. We still have mysteries and problems to solve. But we can take them one by one. We’ll figure it out.”
At last, Fuko, Rin, and Akira all bowed together once more and headed toward the side gate. Fuko would probably give them a ride in her car. Once they disappeared from view, Utai’s fingers flashed.
UI> NOW THEN, I WILL GIVE HOO HIS SUPPER BEFORE I ALSO GO HOME. THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR INVITING ME TODAY.
“Oh, I’ll help you,” Haruyuki naturally offered as president of the Animal Care Club.
UI> NO, I WILL BE FINE ALONE TODAY. ARITA, YOU MUST BE MORE EXHAUSTED THAN YOU THINK. YOU REALLY MUST HURRY HOME, EAT A BIG SUPPER, TAKE A LONG BATH, AND GET A GOOD NIGHT’S SLEEP. Utai rebutted him like an older sister even though she was the much younger one, and Haruyuki tried to argue with a “B-but”; however, he was cut short by the words that flowed across his field of view. UI> THAT’S AN ORDER FROM THE SUPER-PRESIDENT! Utai tapped out with a grin.
“That’s right, Haruyuki.” Kuroyukihime’s smile was slightly wry. “Go home and rest. Otherwise, the cleanup tomorrow will be rough.”
“Yeah, Haru!” Chiyuri immediately chimed in her own encouragement, and Takumu was not far behind.
“They’re right, Haru.”
So he was forced to nod in agreement. Thinking that those two had to be just as tired as he was, he asked if they could walk home together, but Chiyuri had track and Takumu, kendo. He felt like he was forbidden to even offer to wait, so he simply said, as a good-bye, “Um. Okay, then, Shinomiya, say hi to Hoo for me.”
UI> I’LL MAKE SURE TO DO THAT!
“And, Kuroyukihime, I really was impressed by that exhibit. The crepes at your booth were delicious, Chiyu, and Taku, your samurai dance was amazing. Thanks for a great school festival, everyone.”
Kuroyukihime and the others all exclaimed, “Thanks, everyone!”—with Utai via chat, of course.
In that moment, Haruyuki felt keenly that that year’s school festival was over. They still had to clean up, but for eighth-grade class C, at least, all they had to do was take down the panel boards and put the desks and chairs back. They could probably finish that in the morning the next day.
And so the long June finally ended. Morning would bring the start of July. They’d have finals and the closing ceremony, and then it would be summer holidays. No one could stop the flow of time. The future kept pushing in, changing the present to the past. At the very least, he wanted to spend each and every day—each minute, each second without regret, if possible. To pay back all the people who had guided him so far.
Haruyuki waved a big good-bye at his friends and slipped through the clock-shaped gate and out of the school.
7
But the truth was, he didn’t want to go home by himself. He wanted to hang around the school until the mandatory departure time and chat with someone about nothing. Or have an after-party at his house like Niko suggested. He wanted Chiyuri and Takumu to stay over, so they could all fall asleep after exhausting themselves with retro games.
If he could’ve greeted the next day like that, the heavy, painful throbbing of the thorn still piercing his heart would have maybe been less.
He passed through the entrance to the skyscraper condo, the exterior of which had faded to some degree since its construction fifteen years earlier, and took the residents’ elevator to the twenty-third floor. He walked down the hallway, unlocked his door, and opened it.
“…I’m home,” he muttered, but there was only silence in the dark house. His mother was on a business trip overseas and wouldn’t be back until late that night, and today, at least, there would be no surprise attacks from Niko. He slowly took off his shoes and washed his hands and face before going to his room and changing out of his uniform and into a T-shirt.
He glanced at the time, but it was not yet four o’clock. He’d left the house at eight thirty that morning with Niko, who spent the night, so it had only been a mere seven and a half hours since then. If he counted the long mission in the Unlimited Neutral Field, then, in subjective experience, he had spent nearly three times that amount away, but his heart couldn’t keep up. The reality of standing alone in his room seemed like a fake experience created by someone else.
This curious sensation would probably go away if he did the things he usually did when he came home. With this in mind, he opened the to-do list on his virtual desktop, but there wasn’t a single task on it. Of course, there would be no homework on the day of the school festival, and there were no files he needed to submit. In that case, he thought maybe he should have a big room-cleaning session, but he couldn’t find the energy.
His thoughts chased themselves round and round, and his body gradually grew heavier, so Haruyuki flopped onto his bed. He rolled over and looked up at the ceiling. Although he considered just going to sleep, he didn’t actually feel sleepy, even though he was tired. He intertwined his fingers behind his head and let his rambling thoughts drift.
In the fierce battle fought by Kuroyukihime, Fuko, Akira, and Utai, the ISS kit main body had been destroyed. All the terminals—the black eyeballs that parasitized Ash Roller, Magenta Scissor, and dozens of other kit users—had now been completely wiped out. There would be no more threat of Dark Shot or Dark Blow in duels, nor any spread of the kit infection.
But they had a new problem. Wolfram Cerberus had vanished due to a forced disconnect in a state of near death, with a mere ten Burst Points remaining. And Invincible’s thruster was still in his possession.
Niko had said not to panic, but they needed to recover and purify the stolen thruster as soon as possible. Some element of the Armor of Catastrophe, Mark II, likely remained in the Enhanced Armament, and knowing the Acceleration Research Society, they would try to use this for some new sinister design. Cerberus was…He was Haruyuki’s rival and friend, and they needed to completely cut out the root of the evil before Argon Array and the others toyed with him any further.
Also, just because the ISS kits were gone didn’t mean that the memories of the people who had used them were also gone. Some people had experienced serious mental interference and beaten down what had been friends and fellow Legion members with the kit’s power. And some had forcibly infected Burst Linkers around them with the kits.
What would Magenta Scissor and Olive Grab do now? Did they still have somewhere left to go? He hoped they could come to a consensus that it was the Acceleration Research Society they should turn their hatred toward. They were the ones who had disseminated the ISS kits. The crimes of former users should no longer be a question. But he would have to wait for the decision of the kings.
And kings…the White King and her abrupt appearance in the local net duel…She was Kuroyukihime’s parent and real-life older sister, and now the shocking fact that she was also the president of the Acceleration Research Society had been made clear, but Haruyuki couldn’t decide how to process this. If they denounced her without a scrap of physical evidence, there was the risk that this could be used against them at a moment’s notice as a pretext to expel Nega Nebulus. In the end, he had to leave this, too, to Kuroyukihime and Fuko.
In short, there was nothing Haruyuki could do right now. The recovery of the thruster, getting Cerberus away from the Society, the condemnation of the White King—these were all problems he could do nothing about on his own. And he had only destroyed the Armor of Catastrophe, Mark II, somehow because Niko, Pard, Takumu, Chiyuri, and…Metatron had helped him.
Haruyuki squeezed his eyes shut tightly.
The Archangel Metatron had helped Haruyuki time and time again, and now she was gone. Faced with this fact once more, his eyes grew hot. In subjective time, it had been a mere three, four hours earlier that they’d first exchanged words before fighting together, and then she’d disappeared. That was it. And she wasn’t even a Burst Linker. So why did he feel such a strong sense of loss?
It has to be because I was happy, Haruyuki answered the question he had posed. All this time, the Enemies have only been rivals to defeat. And then one talked to me—a powerful Legend-class, the terrifying guard of the impenetrable fortress Midtown Tower. I was so happy she talked to me—that she became my friend.
No. That’s just me finding a reason after the fact. The truth is that I really liked Metatron…When he lifted his eyelids, the tears that had filled his eyes absorbed the yellow light shining in through the window, making it flicker and sway.
Metatron had been chasing after the reason the Accelerated World was created and the meaning of her eight thousand years of life. She said she wouldn’t care if it meant her own extinction even, as long as she got to see the end of the world…
Haruyuki had been able to communicate to her the immensity of the real world that existed outside the Accelerated World. The nearly limitless scale of the time that had passed up to that point in the real world; that would continue onward from that moment as well.
Through the high-performance glass, he could just barely hear the sounds of traffic on Kannana Street. Right about now, the families enjoying a Sunday of shopping in the mall on the ground floor were probably heading home. In this place where Jomon children of eight thousand years ago ran around, where warriors ran wild a thousand years ago on horseback—in this burned-out field of the firebombings a hundred years ago where Haruyuki, Chiyuri, and Takumu had played hide-and-seek ten years ago, time continued to flow. In the real world…and in the Accelerated World.
Maybe I’ll go say good-bye, he suddenly thought.
Utai and Kuroyukihime had told him to make sure to rest, but they’d forgive him, surely, for just a little dive—thirty minutes or maybe an hour. And for the fact that he used ten points. Because Metatron definitely would have been their comrade, too.
He closed his eyes, and the tears that built up there flowed down his cheeks. Not bothering to wipe these away, Haruyuki murmured softly, “Unlimited Burst.”
8
The Unlimited Neutral Field he returned to after three and a half hours in real-world time was dyed a pure white. He touched the crystals of snow falling soundlessly from the ashen sky with an outstretched palm, and they immediately melted and vanished. The skyscraper condo that rose up at his feet had transformed into an enormous mass of ice.
An Ice stage. Given that the stage did not allow entry into buildings, he had appeared on the roof of the condo.
“So there was a Change, huh?” he muttered, but that was only natural. Three and a half real hours was equivalent to about 146 days in the Accelerated World. He slowly lowered himself onto the ice block, covered in about twenty centimeters of snow. Metal-color avatars did have resistance to ice damage, but that didn’t mean they didn’t feel the cold. But right now, he felt fond of even the chill that pricked at his nervous system.
“You said you hated the Hell stage, but I wonder what you thought of the Ice stage,” he spoke to himself as he pulled up a lump of snow with both hands. There was no voice in return, but this was Metatron. Her entire body was a snowy white. He was sure she had liked this pure-white world. Still sitting on the edge of the roof, he stared to the southwest.
The falling snow obstructed his view, so he couldn’t even se
e the government building in Shinjuku. But in that direction lay Tokyo Midtown, where they had fought a fierce battle with Metatron’s first form…and farther beyond that was the old Tokyo Tower and Shiba Park.
“I wanted to see what your Castle was like…”
Now that he thought about it, although he’d been to the old Tokyo Tower where Fuko had set up her hermitage any number of times, he’d never even seen the entrance to the dungeon below Shiba Park. But he probably wouldn’t visit it now. The masterless Castle would only make his sadness grow.
And then Haruyuki suddenly realized. Maybe he didn’t need to get Chiyuri to use Citron Call? When an Enemy was defeated, it came back when a Change happened. Metatron’s true body—her second form—had not once been defeated in eight thousand years, but the same rule had to apply to her, too, didn’t it? In other words, it was possible that, at that moment, the master had come back to the lowest level of the Shiba Park dungeon.
“……”
He scattered his momentarily rising hope with a sigh into the chill air. Even if she had come back, it was undoubtedly a “new” Metatron. Not the Being who fought her own destiny and longed to see the edges of the world, but an Enemy who simply and faithfully executed its orders to attack any visiting Burst Linkers.
“…Why?” Haruyuki muttered hoarsely. “Why…did you…?”
The person he spoke to was not Metatron. It was the unknown developer who had created the Accelerated World—Brain Burst 2039, along with Accel Assault 2038 and Cosmos Corrupt 2040.
“Why did you give Metatron a mind? For what reason did you give her the power to think…the ability to worry, feel pain, have hope? Why did you give her the courage to save a speck of dirt like me…a soul…? Why did you give her love?!” He beat his clenched fists against the ice. The large, strong building of the Ice stage didn’t so much as shudder. He brought it down again and then a third time, and a sharp pain ran through his fist, but he paid it no mind and kept punching. “Why…why…why?!”
Snow White’s Slumber Page 17