Flight Toward a Blue Sky

by Reki Kawahara

  “Device…A device other than a Neurolinker,” he murmured, touching the aluminum silver device around his own neck.

  A VR machine that was not a Neurolinker. They did in fact exist. Around 2020, before Haruyuki was born, you put this enormous headgear on your head. However, the machines of that time were only for full dives. Neurolinkers were the first to actually implement AR of the sort where you could operate a virtual desktop while going about your daily life in the real world—

  “No.” Haruyuki furrowed his brow. “No, that’s not right, is it? The first thing to implement AR was…” He stopped and let his gaze wander through space.

  Something in among his vague memories was jabbing at him. Between the initial headgear and the current Neurolinker, there had to have been another kind of device.

  After struggling for a while, Haruyuki moved a quiet finger and tapped on the drive icon on his virtual desktop. He dove steadily into the countless data folders within his Neurolinker’s local memory. At a very deep level, a folder with the simple name of F appeared.

  F was for father. Here he had saved all the information, or rather memories, he had relating to his real father, a man he had not heard from once since he’d left them way back when. Very few photos. Sound files. Text memos. And a data folder on his father’s work that Haruyuki had copied from the home server right before his mother would have deleted it completely.

  His father had worked at a key network-related company. He’d almost never made it home, and even when he was home on a rare day off, his vision would be full of work materials; he never bothered to look at anything else.

  Remembering that there should have been something about the development history of a VR device among these materials his father had left on the home server, Haruyuki pushed aside the prickly emotions stabbing at his heart as he waded intently through the folder. Finally, he found the file he was looking for and opened it. He traced the chronological text with a finger and scrolled through it.

  The first headgear-type VR machine realizing the full-dive technology had come onto the market in May of 2022. The first generation of the current Neurolinkers was released in April of 2031.

  The instant his eyes took in the name of a certain device printed between these two in small letters, his heart jumped into his throat and his breathing stopped. The skin covering his body suddenly froze, and Haruyuki grabbed on to the railing as hard as he could with both hands.

  No way. Ridiculous. Impossible. But…

  It could happen, if you used this. Looking at a virtual desktop without a Neurolinker…and connecting to a local net without one, too.

  Lips trembling, he released the words into the air in a hoarse voice.

  “…Brain…implant chip…”

  Brain implant chip. BIC for short.

  A wild child existing only for the briefest of moments in the history of wearable VR machines.

  The device itself was a small neuroelectronic chip implanted between the surface of the cerebrum and the dura mater. With self-growing terminals placed on the sensory area of the brain surface, the owner was able to use AR displays like the virtual desktop and even do full dives without equipping any external devices whatsoever. In a certain sense, it was the ultimate VR machine, much more so than the Neurolinker. It was developed and put on the market in 2029. However, only a few years later, it was banned within the country.

  Because, unlike the Neurolinker, you could never power down a BIC, much less take it off. If, hypothetically, a black hat hacker got into your system, you’d face some extreme difficulties in fighting back. Conversely, if you were to use it maliciously, you could get around rules in a variety of ways. The prime example of this was a high school or university entrance exam, or any kind of certification test really. At the time, Neurolinkers did not yet exist, so the basic principle for entrance exams was no VR machines, but if you had a BIC implant, you could easily get full marks in memorization-type subjects. It was essentially the same as bringing every dictionary and reference book ever printed in with you.

  Cases of desperate parents implanting BICs in their test-taking children popped up all over the country, and once the phenomenon spread to the bar exam and the civil servant test, the government was forced to regulate the production and use of BICs. As of the present day in 2047, BICs were illegal VR machines.

  Which was exactly why Haruyuki hadn’t even considered the possibility when Nomi started at Umesato. Now, however, he had to assume no other conclusion was possible. General use of BICs was restricted, but their manufacture continued for specialized applications, and he had heard that there were even hospitals that would implant “dark chips” diverted into the black market. He had absolutely no idea how a junior high school kid would manage that, but if there was one person who could probably do it, it was Nomi.

  Seiji Nomi/Dusk Taker—and probably Rust Jigsaw, too—had a second VR machine on the surface of his brain. It wasn’t that Nomi was blocking the matching list while connected to the Umesato local net. He had never connected a Neurolinker with Brain Burst in it to the net.

  In other words, he used his Neurolinker as a normal standalone. In so doing, he avoided the supposedly unavoidable duels that were the risk that went hand in hand with the privilege of Brain Burst’s power of acceleration, for he could also connect to the network with the BIC. Take the kendo match with Takumu, for instance: While Nomi used the BIC in his head to connect to the local net, he used his unconnected Neurolinker to physically accelerate and dodge Takumu’s shinai. It was only natural that his name wasn’t on the matching list when they looked.

  Except for that one moment when he was connected through his Neurolinker rather than the BIC and had used acceleration to get top marks on his social studies test—

  “Right…That’s right…,” Haruyuki squeezed out hoarsely, killing all of the countless windows still displayed in his field of vision with a wave of his hand.

  Finally. He had finally gotten it. The only correct answer.

  And this information was lethal for Seiji Nomi. You could check for the existence of a BIC with an X-ray scanner. If a chip was discovered in Nomi’s brain, his acceptance at Umesato Junior High would definitely be rescinded.

  If Haruyuki played this card, he could drag Nomi down to the same place as he was in. To a battlefield without privileges. In which case, there was only one thing left for him to do. Duel him, fight with every bit of strength he could muster—and win.

  He stared out at the night sky over the center of Tokyo; Dusk Taker was no doubt soaring through it right about then. “Nomi…This time for sure, I’m finishing this,” he said briefly, each word a bullet.

  9

  April 19.

  Friday.

  On lunch break that day, just one day before Kuroyukihime’s return to Tokyo, Haruyuki proceeded toward the student cafeteria, cut through the rows of long tables, and headed straight for the very back.

  His objective was the lounge, a place where, on top of the unspoken rule that only eighth and ninth graders could use it, many of the tables were reserved seats for council members and the champions’ club. Haruyuki had, up to that point, not once set foot in it when Kuroyukihime was not there.

  However, for now at least, he mustered up the courage to slip through the white gates and walked over to one of the round tables. The students sitting there, having lunch as they chatted pleasantly, noticed Haruyuki’s approach and lifted their faces.

  As the stars of the swimming and softball teams showered him with the dubious gaze reserved for the obviously out of place, Haruyuki turned toward the lone seventh-grade student, small of stature, back still turned, and began to speak in a low voice. “Nomi. I need to talk to you. Come to the place we first spoke.”

  And then he turned on his heel without waiting for a reply.

  As he waited for Nomi under the gloom of the stand of trees in the courtyard, free from the watchful eyes of the social cameras, Haruyuki recalled the day he had first met t
he grade seven here.

  The lowerclassman, cute like a girl, had declared to Haruyuki with a bright voice and a broad smile that the fight was over. And just as he said, from that moment on, the more Haruyuki struggled, the worse he made his own situation. He struck out at Nomi and was instead beaten down himself; on top of being stepped on, he had his flying ability stolen in a direct duel. Although an upset victory had been within his reach in the rematch after he learned the Incarnate System in the Unlimited Neutral Field, he was forced to even greater defeat because of Chiyuri’s unexpected appearance.

  Nomi’s war even pushed into the real world, where Haruyuki was pushed up against the wall thanks to Nomi spreading the rumor that Haruyuki was the secret camera criminal. In the Accelerated World, Nomi was using Haruyuki’s wings and Chiyuri’s person to earn vast quantities of points and level up. If this kept up, the Black King, Black Lotus, most likely Nomi’s final target as Takumu had said, might even be exposed to danger.

  However…

  It ends here, Nomi.

  He heard branches breaking under footfalls approaching him from behind, and Haruyuki slowly turned around. He stared at the innocent yet cunning smile of the lowerclassman, who appeared from the shadow of a thick oak’s trunk.

  “That’s game over. Seiji Nomi—I mean, Dusk Taker.”

  “…What did you say?” Smile still playing on his lips, Nomi cocked his head slightly. “Does this then mean that you’re admitting your complete defeat? Are you saying, I give up, so please don’t torment me anymore?”

  “No. I mean that this game with you is finished,” Haruyuki replied in a low voice, putting every ounce of force his body had into his eyes, to meet his opponent’s teasing gaze.

  Nomi’s smile gradually faded, and a faint line of displeasure dug in between his eyebrows. “Arita, you really are slow on the uptake, aren’t you? I’ll concede that you worked hard, learning a stingy little Incarnate attack and finding that firecracker thing you call an Enhanced Armament, but it should be clear by now that this served you absolutely no purpose. All you and Mayuzumi can do now is watch enviously from the sidelines. I will defeat the Black King and rule this school—no, the entire Suginami area.”

  Nomi’s voice was cold, a slicing knife, and Haruyuki shook his head hard to brush the words away. “No. I won’t let you do that.” He took a step forward and announced curtly, “The reason you don’t show up on the matching list is because you have a second VR machine in that head of yours. By which I mean…an illegal brain implant chip.”

  The sudden change that came over Nomi’s face confirmed the correctness of Haruyuki’s guess. Both eyes flew open before narrowing grimly. His bared teeth squeaked and several thin lines ran along the bridge of his nose. But he didn’t make a move to open his mouth to try and speak, so Haruyuki pushed further.

  “If I’m wrong, then go ahead and take off your Neurolinker right now. I know the school register tag I can see won’t disappear even if you do.”

  Nomi and Haruyuki both knew there was no point in him feigning ignorance and saying he had no obligation to do any such thing. If Haruyuki sent in an anonymous tip to the school authorities, Nomi would end up getting a brain scan at the hospital with a member of the school management staff as a witness. It would be completely and entirely impossible to falsify the result. Nomi would then be deemed to have been admitted to the school under false pretenses, and in addition to being expelled, he would be forced to undergo treatment to inactivate the BIC. The damage would be equivalent to or greater than what would happen to Haruyuki if he was “outed” as the secret video criminal.

  Not even trying to hide his rage, Nomi glared at Haruyuki. “…Here I thought you were a pig, and the truth is you’re a rat, hmm?” he spat in a hoarse voice. “Endlessly darting about, sniffing at everything…”

  “Then you should have crushed me at the start. The fact that you didn’t is your mistake.”

  Nomi gradually suppressed the heat of his anger at Haruyuki’s retort, and the sneer returned to his lips. “Well, I will give you that. So? What do you plan to do? Is it your wish to fire our missiles and be destroyed together? We’ll both be expelled. I’ll be sent to the hospital and you to juvenile detention. Moreover, at some point we’ll both be attacked in the real and lose Brain Burst. Are you saying that that is the ending you’re choosing?”

  “If it comes to that. I’m not afraid of that.” But clenching fists cold with sweat, Haruyuki opened his mouth to suggest the ending he had spent the whole night thinking up. “Nomi. We each hold a trump card, you with my video, me with your secret. If there is a way to resolve this other than using these cards and destroying each other in the real…it’s a duel.”

  “A duel?”

  “Yeah. You and I are both Burst Linkers, after all. Connect to the local net right now through your Neurolinker, not your BIC. Turn off the once-a-day limit and just keep fighting me. Until one of us admits defeat or loses all his burst points. Although I’ll tell you right from the start, I have no intention of surrendering until my last point is gone.”

  And then even if I do lose, after that, it’s Taku. And then Kuroyukihime will fight you.

  Nomi had to have heard these unspoken words, added on in Haruyuki’s heart.

  Once more, albeit for a very brief moment, deep anger and irritation rose up onto the face of Seiji Nomi. “Duel. Burst Linker. Both terms that I despise. No, the very mentality that would seriously use those words is so detestable I can hardly stand it. But…if that is what you desire, then I suppose I have no choice.” His expression reverted to his usual faint smile as he leaned back against the oak and flipped a finger up. “But if it’s going to be like this, then I have one suggestion.”

  “…Suggestion?”

  “Don’t you think it’s ridiculous to fight accelerated duel after duel, dozens of times, even hundreds of times if it goes poorly, until one of us loses all his points? And assuming one of us surrenders, what kind of guarantee does that offer?”

  “So what are you saying we should do?”

  “Let’s finish it in one go. The ‘final battle’ you do so like,” Nomi said, gruesome grin cut into his face. “In the Unlimited Neutral Field, there’s a way to wager all the burst points of the players on a single match. Two or more duelers charge all their points into an item, and then the last player left standing gets the item and the points. So? Don’t you think this is a rather smart way of deciding things?”

  Haruyuki stared hard at Nomi’s smiling face for several seconds and then shook his head slightly. “Unfortunately, Nomi, I can’t trust you that much. I’m sure this is no surprise to you or anything. In the Unlimited Neutral Field, I can’t rule out the possibility that you’ll ambush me with your friends in the place of the battle.”

  Nomi spread his hands in a “what am I going to do with you?” sort of way. “I think I’m the one at risk of that! But in that case, allow me to give you two guarantees. The first is that you are welcome to bring Cyan Pile—Mayuzumi. I’ll fight you each in turn. And the second is that you can go ahead and postpone the time of the battle immediately before it is to start by however many minutes as many times as you like. That way, it would, in reality, be impossible to ambush someone.”

  Haruyuki held his breath and thought quickly.

  In the Unlimited Neutral Field, time passed at a thousand times faster than in the real world. So for instance, if they initially set a dive for five PM, if he postponed it by ten minutes a few seconds in advance of that, a week of time would pass inside. If he did this several times, the lapsed time would balloon, making it impossible to keep waiting and not go insane. And if you repeatedly broke away with dives in small increments, you would have to use ten burst points each time. No one but a king-class player could sustain that kind of point loss.

  The talk of ambushes in the Unlimited Neutral Field made him remember the Yellow Legion’s scheme against Red King Niko during the whole Chrome Disaster thing three months earlier, but it wasn
’t like they had been sitting there waiting for months, not knowing when Niko would show up. In the process of transferring the Enhanced Armament, they had cracked the real of Disaster’s true self Cherry Rook, and they had guessed at what time Niko would dive by monitoring his movements. Without means like that, setting up an ambush in the Unlimited Neutral Field was impossible—or you would think, anyway.

  However, Haruyuki was well aware that his knowledge of the Accelerated World was still far from great, so of course, he didn’t give an immediate answer. “If that’s what you want to do, I can talk it over with Takumu, yeah?”

  “Of course you can. Please do! Go ahead! You go and discuss it to your heart’s content.” Grinning, Nomi took a step back. “Once you make a decision, please get in touch with me at this address. I’d also like time to prepare mentally.” He flicked an anonymous mailing address at Haruyuki, then whirled around and left the courtyard. Haruyuki held his breath and stared at his receding back.

  He had a bad feeling. He had assumed this would play out with him hitting Nomi with the single word BIC and then they would just jump into the duel straightaway. He felt like Nomi was trying to wrest back control by getting this time now.

  After checking that Nomi had disappeared into the school building, Haruyuki leaned up against a nearby tree and uttered in neurospeak, “What do you think, Taku?”

  “It’s risky,” Takumu replied immediately. He had been listening to the whole conversation with Nomi online.

  Haruyuki had already told Takumu all about the BIC things he had realized the night before. They had also decided on how to finish things with Seiji Nomi, the idea that first Haruyuki, and then Takumu, would intently challenge him to duels on the local net until Nomi ran out of burst points.

  Naturally, it wasn’t as though they hadn’t considered the possibility that both of them would lose all of their points going up against the level-six Dusk Taker. But if they were defeated in a normal fight—well, that was that. Once you dive into the battlefield, there is only the fight. That was precisely the thinking of their master, Kuroyukihime.