Accel World: Floating Bridge in Starlight
Page 25
Eventually, Kuroyukihime slowly raised her head, and gazed straight at Haruyuki with wet eyes and smiled.
“……The enormity of the miracle you created…cannot be conveyed at all with words. Thank you, Haruyuki-kun.”
Fuuko also turned around and smiled broadly with tear marks shining on her cheeks.
“Karasu-san. I will never forget…how you found the path to the Hermes Cord, invited me, and brought me to that place beyond the sky at last.”
Haruyuki gave a short, gradual shake of his head at their words.
“No, that’s too much. I…I just thought of it a little at first…It was everyone in the legion, Ash-san and Pard-san who made it a reality…”
As he mumbled that out in a low voice even he couldn’t hear well, he thought ‘Uwah, I’ve spoiled the whole situation with this’, and pressed his back against the wall and tried to hide himself there.
Kuroyukihime and Fuuko exchanged a look, smiled at the same time, and then suddenly walked towards Haruyuki.
“Eh, umm, err.”
He looked up at each of their faces and tried to use his ‘fading into the wall’ skill even further, but before he could, Kuroyukihime’s right arm and Fuuko’s left arm came forward and held up Haruyuki from either side of him, and then—
There were no memories of what happened after that.
(END)
Author's Notes
Kawahara Reki here. Thank you very much for picking up “Accel World Volume 5: Floating Bridge in Starlight”.
There’s something I must confess first. I had already described the existence of the «orbital elevator» in the world of Accel World at the beginning of Volume 3, but I hadn’t done any preliminary investigation into the actual technology of it at that point, sorry! I just vaguely wrote it down while thinking “It should be possible to make an orbital elevator by the time of 2047, right?”, but some time later when I thought “Now then, let’s finally make it appear in this volume.” and did some belated research…I was put into an incredibly terrible bind…
In reality, the so-called «orbital elevator» has actually still not gone beyond being a theoretical experiment, and it is unlikely that it can be realized at all in the next 30 years. The detailed reasons for that were explained by Kuroyukihime-senpai in the book, so I’ll omit saying it here, but I turned pale when someone from NASA retorted to me “The counterweight would have to be a small asteroid!”.
Fortunately, I spoke to researchers who have advocated more realistic ideas, and those ideas became the model for the «Hermes Cord» that appears in this volume. Though, it seems there are actually huge problems with the «hypersonic sky hook» that I used as a model…But, I didn’t write any of those problems into the book. So don't pay it any notice.
In any case, I got the precious lesson “Look into the actual materials before writing anything about it!” from this. A new character of a very young age will probably be appearing in the next volume, so I think I’ll do my best to investigate into a lot of things and consult with my good friend Professor A-san.
This afterword is being written on April 10th, that is, the deadline for the 17th Dengeki Novel Prize. In other words, a full two years have already passed since I handed in the envelope (if I remember right, it was an Expack) containing my first draft of Accel World to the post office window.
Honestly, when I handed it in back then, I didn’t think it would all come thi~~s far after that. Rather, to be frank, I just thought, if I managed to get some prize, that would be the end of it. Really, I have never even thought that would be a new starting point for me, and that I would continue steadily writing these manuscripts for as long as two years…Of course, being able to write them is extremely Mega Lucky~, but sometimes I just feel dazed by it all. Just where does the goal of this thunder road lie?
To my editor Miki-san, who has patiently guided a troubling lost child like me; the illustrator HIMA-san, who I made a lot of trouble for by firing non-stop difficult requests at him as usual; the manga artist Kurusu Tatsuya-san, who accepted and took over the design drafts for the newly appearing avatars; and all of you who have stuck with me this far, Giga-thank you very much!
2010 December 15th, Kawahara Reki
References
↑ "Arcade" here refers to overhead arches or ceilings that are placed above a street, not the gaming establishment.
↑ Ossu: Japanese greeting that basically means “Hi”, but it sounds better when left in the original.
↑ The “Kuroyuki” here is not a mistake; Chiyuri leaves out the “hime” (princess) when she refers to Kuroyukihime, thereby calling her “Black Snow” instead of “Black Snow Princess”.
↑ Piano black is basically a very glossy kind of black.
↑ Basically means “good grief” in English.
↑ Kabukicho: Red light district in Shinjuku, Tokyo.
↑ Akasaka Estate (Akasaka Goyouchi): a large forested tract of land that contains the Akasaka Palace.
↑ TL Note: Both Horn and Shell speak in an exaggerated and rough manner that’s hard to translate in English. Just imagine the way a couple of old-style high school delinquents from some anime would speak, and you’ll get the idea.
↑ Here, Haruyuki says “Bell” in the regular text, but “Chiyu” in furigana. Since he’s speaking in front of other players, I’m leaving it as “Bell”.
↑ It says tourmaline in furigana, but the kanji beneath it translates as “electric gem”.
↑ For those who don’t know, Nee-san is a way of saying “big sister”. In this case, though, it’s meant more as a familiar nickname toward an older female acquaintance, the reasons for which are further explained in the next few paragraphs.
↑ The comment here lies in the kanji meaning of Chiyuri’s and Fuuko’s family names, which are “倉嶋” and “倉崎” respectively. Besides the first kanji 倉 they share which is pronounced as “Kura”, the similar-looking second kanjis 嶋 and 崎 each respectively mean “island” and “peninsula/cape of a coast”, two terms that are closely related.
↑ For those who don't notice, this is a reference to the declaration Frost Horn made earlier in the chapter.
↑ The kanji below the English furigana “Area” is “戦域” (battle area).
↑ To finish Kuroyukihime’s purposely cut-short explanation, the “suspension bridge effect” is the psychological phenomenon where a person is in a very frightened state, like if they were on a very high and rickety suspension bridge, and that heart-pounding and adrenaline-filled fear is mistaken for love/passion for another person with them.
↑ Brain Burst Program
↑ Kuroyukihime’s pause here and her change of words is better understood in Japanese. At the end of the first line, she says “ki”, which is the beginning of “kimi” (you), while in this line she changes it to “kibarashi” (recreation). I’m sorry I couldn’t make this evident in the English translation.
↑ Demonic city: Written as 魔都 (mato) in Japanese, it is sometimes used as a nickname for Tokyo, or more rarely, for Shinjuku specifically, which fits in this case.
↑ 5 o’clock, 34 minutes and 42 seconds.
↑ NP: No Problem.
↑ This is one of those places where the use of English letters makes it hard to translate effectively. Here, Haruyuki stutters as he copies Pard’s use of capital letter abbreviations, starting by saying “ke” before properly saying “K”, short for “okay”.
↑ SE: Sound Effect.
↑ The kanji beneath the furigana English name “Strato Shooter” is “超空の流星”, which translates roughly as “shooting star of the hyper-sky".
↑ ICBM: Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile
↑ Like in the first chapter of Vol 4, the bold part of the text indicates that the text here has switched over to using katakana instead of hiragana, most likely indicating that the voice has become rougher and darker.
↑ "Utan" is presumably short for "Orangutan".
↑ Ma
ster (shishou) in this case means more along the lines of “teacher”, but master sounds better when speaking to someone, so it’s left like that.
↑ Jack-knifing: basically, when a vehicle like a trailer (or in this case, a motorbike) suddenly brakes, causing the back section to turn at an acute angle from the front section/wheel.
↑ Yes, that’s literally what Ash Roller says in English, “Tera-Nothing”. No idea what that’s supposed to mean.
↑ Karasu: Japanese for “crow”. Left in Japanese to differentiate when they say “Crow” in English.
↑ GM: Game Master.
↑ This is a complicated subject of physics that even I don’t fully understand. For a jargon-filled explanation, go to this link[1].
↑ Haruyuki is babbling here, so the lack of commas is on purpose to demonstrate his rushed speech.
↑ AR: Altered Reality. Similar in a sense to Virtual reality, but involves overlaying virtual images or words onto one's vision of the real world instead of creating an entirely digital environment.
↑ “Soft” and “hard” in this case are basically referring to two different kinds of martial art or just basic fighting styles: “hard” attacks focus on power to deal direct damage, while “soft” attacks focus on gentle and flowing motions that utilize precise technique instead of pure strength to deal more indirect damage.
↑ Bolero jacket: a short tailored jacket similar to a shrug or cardigan
↑ Karasu (鴉) is Japanese for crow
↑ “Sacchan” is Fuuko’s nickname for Kuroyukihime. It combines with the friendly suffix “-chan” with “Sa”, which is presumably the first syllable of Kuroyukihime’s real name
↑ A vague noise to convey assent
↑ Referring to the Purple King in an informal/rude manner
↑ This paragraph is rather complicated to translate properly. For one thing, I had to add more “…” than were actually present, due to sentences cutting off before the verbs were mentioned. Also, very peculiarly, the last sentence ends without a period like I showed in this translation, suggesting that, instead of being interrupted or pausing like usual, Haruyuki’s thoughts literally just cut off there without warning. There are a variety of psychological interpretations for this, which I will leave to your imaginations.
↑ Nega-Bu: Shortened nickname for “Nega Nebulas”
↑ In this paragraph, everyone has their real names in furigana above their avatar names, so I duplicated that here.
↑ Here, Pard-san actually does use the English greeting «’sup?», the popular abbreviation of “What’s up?”.
↑ As always, Ash Roller is speaking in terrible Engrish. The kanji he uses here means “losing dog” (like the expression “a dog running away with its tail between its legs”) or just plain “loser” if you want to simplify it, but in the furigana, Ash Roller uses a literal English translation that’s grammatically incorrect. I left it as is because it’s just Ash’s style of speaking at this point.
↑ Ash is simply slurring Karasu (Crow) into Garasu here.
↑ Promi: Shortened for “Prominence”
↑ Kanji beneath English phrase “Calling Gale” are “疾風召喚”, which basically means “gale summon”.
↑ Beneath the English furigana “Rust Order” are the kanji “錆びる秩序”, which translate as «rusted order/system”.
↑ The kanji below the English furigana “Wind Veil» are “庇護風陣”, which translate as “protective wind encampment”.
↑ Here, Haruyuki switches from the “I” pronoun “boku”, which how younger boys usually address themselves, to “ore” instead, which is an older and rougher way of referring to oneself.
↑ Beneath the English furigana “Rust Touch” are the kanji “錆びる掌握”, which translated as “rusted grasp”.
↑ “CU” is Pard’s abbreviation for “see you”.
↑ Here, Sky Raker’s English name is put in furigana unlike normal, and the phrase “空を見晴らす人” is put beneath it. This translates as “Person who commands the view of the sky”.
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Volume 1 Illustrations - Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6 - Chapter 7 - Chapter 8 - Chapter 9 - Author's Notes
Volume 2 Illustrations - Prologue - Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6 - Chapter 7 - Chapter 8 - Chapter 9 - Author's Notes
Volume 3 Illustrations - Prologue - Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6 - Chapter 7 - Chapter 8 - Chapter 9 - Chapter 10 - Chapter 11 - Chapter 12 - Chapter 13 - Author's Notes
Volume 4 Illustrations - Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6 - Chapter 7 - Chapter 8 - Chapter 9 - Chapter 10 - Chapter 11 - Chapter 12 - Author's Notes
Volume 5 Illustrations - Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6 - Chapter 7 - Chapter 8 - Chapter 9 - Chapter 10 - Chapter 11 - Author's Notes
Volume 6 Illustrations - Prologue - Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6 - Chapter 7 - Chapter 8 - Chapter 9 - Chapter 10 - Chapter 11 - Chapter 12 - Author's Notes
Volume 7 Illustrations - Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6 - Chapter 7 - Chapter 8 - Chapter 9 - Chapter 10 - Author's Notes
Volume 8 Illustrations - Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6 - Chapter 7 - Chapter 8 - Chapter 9 - Chapter 10 - Chapter 11 - Author's Notes
Volume 9 Illustrations - Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6 - Chapter 7 - Chapter 8 - Chapter 9 - Chapter 10 - Chapter 11 - Chapter 12 - Author's Notes
Volume 10 Illustrations - Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Author's Notes
Volume 11 Illustrations - Prologue - Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6 - Chapter 7 - Chapter 8 - Chapter 9 - Chapter 10 - Chapter 11 - Chapter 12 - Chapter 13 - Chapter 14 - Author's Notes
Volume 12 Illustrations - Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6 - Chapter 7 - Chapter 8 - Chapter 9 - Sky Blue Wings Chapter 1 - Sky Blue Wings Chapter 2 - Author's Notes