The Red Crest

by Reki Kawahara

  These words, too, were essentially the same thing she had said eight months earlier. However, at the time, Haruyuki had pulled back his clenched fist and hung his head deeply. Now, however, he squeezed her even more tightly. “Me too. From the bottom of my heart, I’m glad you chose me.”

  “…Thank you.” Her murmured voice was deep and damp. Her faint sobs continued then for nearly two minutes, but Haruyuki didn’t pull his hands away; he simply accepted wordlessly the tears that fell.

  What broke the warm, gentle silence was the announcement telling all students still on campus to return home.

  Kuroyukihime slowly sat up. “Wait a moment,” she said, heading into the kitchen. He heard the sound of water, which then quickly stopped. When the vice president returned, her face had essentially regained its usual cool composure, although there was still a little redness, particularly around her eyes.

  They left the student council office together, walked to their separate lockers to change shoes, and met up again in the front yard. Once they stepped through the school gates, the in-school local net was cut off, and in its place, the icon for the global-net connection flashed.

  Since the condo building Haruyuki lived in and the Asagaya residence where Kuroyukihime’s town house was were in opposite directions, with Umesato in the middle, normally, this was where they would part, going off to the right and the left. But Kuroyukihime stopped at the side of the gate and didn’t make a move.

  “Haruyuki.” The look on her face was serious.

  “Y-yes?” He naturally snapped to attention.

  Kuroyukihime cleared her throat lightly before continuing. “When I really think about it, it was all fine and good to call you to the student council office, but don’t you feel like we didn’t talk about the really important thing?”

  “Huh? The important thing? What do you mean?” Haruyuki replied.

  She brought her face in close. “The matter of the crest inscribed on the cards you brought back.”

  “Oh!” Now that she mentioned it, that was true. The reason she had called him to the student council office in the first place was supposedly because, for some reason, the crossed guns emblem of the first Red King was on the cards that sealed the ISS kits, but that matter was still shrouded in mystery.

  If Kuroyukihime had some kind of theory, he wanted to hear it right then and there, but they couldn’t exactly stand and talk like that at the school gates. Haruyuki checked the time display and thought quickly. His original plan had been to head to Nakano Area No. 2 after he left school, just like he had the previous day, and duel Wolfram Cerberus for the third time. Cerberus was also wrapped in all kinds of mysteries, but if Haruyuki kept exchanging blows with him, he had the feeling that he would arrive at the truth of Cerberus at some point. But, regrettably, at that moment, he had a mission that had to take priority.

  This was, of course, the destruction of the ISS kits. Magenta Scissor wouldn’t stop at taking down one school in Shimokitazawa. Before she spread the kits any farther, they had to cut out the root of the dark power. But the annoying thing was that it was, of course, impossible for Haruyuki to go on his own and attack Tokyo Midtown Tower, where the kit main body was enshrined, and it was too dangerous for even the six members of Nega Nebulus to attempt. Even if they did manage to dispose of the guardian, the Archangel Metatron, they had no way of knowing what was waiting inside the tower. Just as had been decided at the last meeting of the Seven Kings, a joint operation with all seven of the major Legions was essential.

  Once his thoughts had reached this point, Haruyuki gasped with sudden realization. “Uh, um, Kuroyukihime?”

  “Hmm? If we’re going to talk about the crest, we should go somewhere quiet.”

  “N-no, this is something else. Right now, the Midtown Tower attack is the top priority, right?”

  “Whoa, whoa! It’s too dangerous to talk about that in a public space with real voices. Even if someone unconnected overheard us, we could be suspected of being terrorists, you know.” Kuroyukihime grinned wryly, but when she noticed that the look on Haruyuki’s face was serious, she blinked once, then nodded as if to say Hold on and reached into her bag. She pulled out a meter-and-a-half-long XSB cable, and without giving Haruyuki the time to say anything, she offered him one end while plugging the other into her Neurolinker.

  After all this time, there was no point in being embarrassed about directing, so Haruyuki kept his serious face on—although a light sweat did break out on his back—and accepted the plug, connecting it to his neck.

  “It’s been a while since I directed with you in town.” Immediately, Kuroyukihime’s neurospeak voice echoed in his mind. “You do seem entirely used to it, though.”

  “I-I’m not used to it at all. Totally not!”

  “Hmm, I suppose you’re not, then.”

  “Oh…s-sorry, I just…” Feeling ashamed, this time he replied in neurospeak.

  Kuroyukihime laughed. “How about we walk a bit? The rain’s finally lifted and all.”

  Just as she said, the rain clouds that had departed toward the east before lunch showed no signs of returning now, and the rain forecast on his virtual desktop showed numbers in the 10 percent range until evening.

  “Okay. Just hold on a minute. I’ll turn off automatic viewing,” Haruyuki said briefly, and he quickly opened the Brain Burst console. When automatic viewing mode was on, if a duel started between Burst Linkers registered on his viewing list in their current location of Suginami Area No. 1, he would accelerate without warning in the middle of a conversation.

  “Um, you’re not going to turn it off, too, Kuroyukihime?” Haruyuki asked her casually as he switched the mode to “off.”

  “No need. Apologies to the other Legion members, but the only one registered on my viewing list is you,” she replied as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

  He was surprised to hear this, but then Kuroyukihime peeked at his face and winked lightly, so his heart leapt even higher in his chest. Heart pounding and gaze frozen in place, he hit the OK button of the confirmation dialog window and fumbled to close the console. He felt like he heard some kind of unfamiliar sound effect, but his brain had its hands full carefully weighing how exactly to respond to her statement. Eventually, what came from not his mouth but his mind was “Th-that’s an honor.”

  It was a simple, inoffensive statement, and Kuroyukihime nodded, still smiling.

  “Well then, shall we go?” She turned her feet north.

  The everyday road that continued just under a hundred meters from the school gates was deserted, but the instant they stepped out onto the sidewalk of Oume Highway, housewives carrying bags of groceries and office workers headed for the station filled Haruyuki’s field of view. Naturally, mixed among them were students from nearby schools, and a variety of expressions popped up onto their faces upon seeing Haruyuki and Kuroyukihime with their Neurolinkers connected by a thin cord as they passed by.

  I’ll never get used to this, Haruyuki complained to himself, but he kept it as a thought deep enough not to be output as a voice.

  “Now then,” Kuroyukihime said coolly as they waited for the red light to change. “About your question concerning the priority of the Midtown Tower attack that you started to ask before, the answer is, at any rate, yes.”

  “Huh? Oh, y-yes. Right.” Haruyuki rewound his thoughts by several minutes and bobbed his head up and down. “Um, the thing that was bugging me…For the Tower attack, the seven Legions will be working together, but then that means we’ll be taking a cooperative stance with the White Legion, but for you, I mean, the White King…”

  “…Is that it? Sorry to make you worry about that.” At the same time as Kuroyukihime lowered her eyes slightly, the light changed to green. The time remaining for the green light displayed in the navigation window in his view had dropped three seconds before her black loafers finally moved forward. “It’s true that the hatred I have for my sister—for White Cosmos—has not faded in the sli
ghtest since that night. To the point where if I were to face her without any mental preparation, I don’t know what I’d do. However, even so, I have a reason for attending the last meeting and the meeting before that of the Seven Kings, and for accepting this shared mission.”

  “Reason? What sort of reason?”

  “The White King does not show herself before Burst Linkers of other Legions as a general rule. In the very early days of the Accelerated World, naturally, she also dueled, but even then, whether by ability or the power of an Enhanced Armament, most of the time, her form was wrapped in a light that dazzled the eyes and so couldn’t be seen. And since she reached level nine, I suppose basically the only ones who have seen her are the other kings and the senior members of the White Legion Oscillatory Universe. Well, until I met you, that was me, so I can’t really talk,” she added as they finished crossing the road, and without the slightest hesitation, she turned them toward the shopping street ahead. They continued to walk north, farther and farther from Kuroyukihime’s house, but because of the short cable directly connecting them, Haruyuki had no choice but to follow.

  “In other words, although this is pathetic, I was able to attend the meetings precisely because I was certain she would not be there. The shared mission is the same. The location is also the Unlimited Neutral Field, and hypothetically, even if the kings were asked to participate in the operation, she would simply send her representative, as she has up to now. What I hate is not Oscillatory Universe, but White Cosmos alone, so it doesn’t make sense to reject the joint mission with my hatred as a reason.”

  Kuroyukihime stopped there and slid the fingers of her left hand along the XSB cable swinging between the two of them. Almost as if it were the physical manifestation of the connection between Haruyuki and Kuroyukihime, she held it tight in her palm.

  “But it would be a lie to say I have no misgivings or anxiety whatsoever. I was counting on you to get the Theoretical Mirror ability, and even if the name is different, I have faith that the Optical Conduction ability you did learn will play a wonderful role. But even so, my uneasiness—no, my fear—hasn’t gone away since the moment the meeting ended on Sunday.”

  “What…is that fear of?”

  This time, it took a while for an answer to come back to him. The pedestrian-only shopping street was more crowded than Oume Highway, so they were forced up against each other as they walked. Kuroyukihime’s arm brushed against Haruyuki’s, and she was cool to the touch.

  “She’s a terrifying person.”

  Suddenly, these words echoed in Haruyuki’s brain. As she continued, the strained thought would have been barely a whisper if it were communicated in a real voice.

  “She sees through to the wounds in the hearts of all people, prescribes the appropriate words and attitudes, and heals them. But on the underside of this, she controls the hearts of those other people and manipulates them. The reason I haven’t said anything to you before about the White King is because I was afraid that by hearing about her, that terrifying ability to manipulate might affect even you indirectly.”

  “Th-that’s— I wouldn’t be manipulated!” Haruyuki replied reflexively.

  “Yes, of course, I believe that.” Kuroyukihime nodded. “I spoke frankly with you about my relationship with the White King today because…I realized that being afraid of losing you was the same thing as doubting you.”

  Here, her feet stopped abruptly, and she placed her hands on Haruyuki’s shoulders and moved the two of them to the side of a large sign so they weren’t in the way of the people passing by. Still, it wasn’t as though they were now far removed from their surroundings, so the flickering glances of passersby were still turned on them.

  Normally, Haruyuki would be painfully aware of those glances, but at the moment, he couldn’t take his eyes off Kuroyukihime’s serious face. She closed in until their noses were about twenty centimeters apart, and then Kuroyukihime moved her lips to say in both thought and real voice, “Haruyuki, I have one other thing that I must tell you.”

  “O-okay.”

  “That—”

  However, he didn’t hear the rest of it. Because at the moment when Kuroyukihime took a deep breath, a familiar sound slammed into his auditory nerves. Skreeee! Cold, dry thunder. The sound of acceleration.

  Wh-why?! Haruyuki was stunned. Neither he nor Kuroyukihime had given the acceleration command, and their present location was Nega Nebulus territory, so duels should have been blocked. And he had definitely turned automatic viewing mode off. There should have been no reason for him to accelerate.

  This surprise was doubled the instant he saw that message that flamed up in the center of his now-dark field of view. It wasn’t the HERE COMES… from when he was challenged, nor was it the REGISTERED DUEL… when automatic viewing was activated.

  A BATTLE ROYALE IS BEGINNING!!

  9

  It was only after Silver Crow’s feet touched down on the white ground of the duel stage that he was able to digest the meaning of that line of text.

  The fighting game Brain Burst had single match, a tag-team match, and following that, a third type of match: Battle Royale mode. The procedure for starting a Battle Royale was easy: Simply accelerate with the normal Burst Link command, open the matching list, and select BATTLE ROYALE from the submenu. However, that said, it wasn’t the case that this pulled everyone on the list into the duel stage. Given that the system was such that only Burst Linkers who had Battle Royale standby on in the console screen settings could be summoned, everyone normally had that standby turned to off. Haruyuki, naturally, was no exception.

  So why am I in a Battle Royale?! He started to panic before finally figuring it out: Because he’d been operating his virtual desktop without looking carefully at the screen when he turned automatic viewing mode off earlier, he must’ve accidentally touched Battle Royale standby in the same tab and turned it on.

  “Why am I such a klutz…,” he muttered to himself dejectedly, dropping his shoulders.

  “I see,” came from immediately beside him. “You’re not a hero with BR mode always on. This is instead the result of mistaken operation?” The voice sounded exasperated.

  Jumping slightly, he turned his gaze and found a dazzling and majestic duel avatar, body wrapped in jet-black semitransparent armor, the sharp swords of her four limbs glittering. Naturally, it was none other than the Black King, Black Lotus.

  “Huh?! Wh-why?! You can’t have Battle Royale—?!” Haruyuki cried out in a hoarse voice.

  “Unfortunately, I am not the hero that you are.” The amethyst semi-mirrored goggles popped from side to side. “I was called here not as a dueler but as the Gallery because I automatically view you.”

  “Oh. M-makes sense. Good.” He relaxed slightly. The probability was extremely low, but if another king—i.e., another level niner—had also been summoned to this battlefield, it would have been the abrupt start to a sudden-death final battle. With that in mind, he took a look at his surroundings and found the silhouettes of other members of the Gallery—albeit few of them—on the roofs of the buildings of the pale, frozen Ice stage.

  Normally, the Gallery couldn’t come within ten meters of the duelers, but parent and child were the exception to that rule. Kuroyukihime brought her face mask close to Haruyuki’s face. “Even if the reason you were pulled into the Battle Royale space is simple carelessness, the issue at hand is the person who pulled you in. It’s essentially not possible to start a BR through an accident of operation. In other words, this person is either so brave that they don’t fear the fact that this could be a battle of many against one in the territory of another Legion, or…they have reason to believe that they can win even in that situation.”

  “……! N-no way. An ISS kit user…?”

  “It’s possible. And if that’s the case, you must avoid close combat to the best of your abilities. The enemy’s objective might not be simply to win the duel but to spread the kit infection.”

  “R-right…�
� After Haruyuki nodded, he glanced up toward the left of his field of view. If this had been a normal duel, the enemy’s health gauge and name would have been displayed there, but it was blank now. In Battle Royale mode, you couldn’t see the enemy’s gauge until you came into contact with that enemy.

  The sole piece of information he had was the guide cursor that popped up in the lower part of the center of his field of view, but that only told him the direction of his nearest enemy. It was currently pointing toward the southeast—the direction of Oume Highway—and was changing direction toward the south at a fair speed.

  “S-so fast! There’s no hesitation in that movement. That’s probably the starter. They’re coming this way.” Together with Kuroyukihime, Haruyuki turned his eyes toward the south of the shopping street. But a loosely curving wall of ice blocked their view, and they couldn’t see through to the narrow lane beyond.

  “It’d be better to make contact in a bigger space than here. I’m going back to Oume Highway,” Haruyuki said.

  “Mmm.” Kuroyukihime quickly nodded. “Understood. I can’t come close once the duel starts, so make sure you take care and stay on guard against any ISS kits.”

  “Roger! Okay, I’m off, then!” Haruyuki shouted and, whirling around, he started to run, kicking at the snow piled up on the ground.

  Large icicles fell occasionally from the ice walls that had once been shops lining either side of the road. Each time he came across one of these, he kicked it to destroy it. They didn’t begin to compare with the crystals of the Sacred Ground stage, but even so, his special-attack gauge was charged little by little. These sorts of little acts often decided battles.

  Racing along with Silver Crow’s speed, he was through the road he’d walked down while directing with Kuroyukihime in a fraction of the time it had taken them to come. He slipped through the large ice arch that had been the commercial district’s sign and came out onto Oume Highway to find a pure, snowy field spreading out to the east and west. It would be an endless delight to use one end of the stage to the other and create an enormous snowman, but that would have to be his fun for next time. Right now, he used a boost jump to get to the top of the lump of ice rising up on the northeast corner of the intersection.