Suguha immediately ran up to me, ‘I made this’, and handed me a thick sandwich. I accepted it gratefully and bit on it, then opened the patio door and walked down to the yard.
“C, cold…”
I ducked my head when I realized the cold was penetrating my jacket. Suguha looked up at the dark night sky and said.
“Ah… snow.”
“Oh…”
Indeed, there were two or three large white snowflakes that came floating down. I hesitated a moment about whether to call a taxi. If I did that though, I would have to wait then walk to the main road to be picked up, so it would be faster to just use my bicycle.
“Be careful. … Say hello to Asuna for me.”
“Yeah. Next time, I’ll introduce you properly.”
I waved goodbye to Suguha and sitting astride my mountain bike, I started pedaling.
I let my bike run at full speed, and the crazy speed blew the thoughts out of my head as I flew through south Saitama. The snow gradually started falling down harder but it didn’t accumulate, and the reduced traffic density was helpful.
I wanted to reach Asuna in the hospital as quickly as possible - but at the same time, I was partly afraid of what I might find. For the past two months, I had visited that room every other day, always tasting bitter disappointment. Wondering if she would become a cold statue like that, I took her hand while she was silently imprisoned in sleep. I kept calling her name even though it never reached her.
Like this, while moving down this road, I even remember the gaps, finding her in the fairy kingdom, defeating the fake king, and freeing her from chains might just be my fantasy.
If I visited her hospital room a few minutes later and Asuna did not wake up.
Her soul was no longer in ALfheim, but she still did not return to reality - again she might have vanished to some unknown place.
It wasn’t only the snow hitting my face in the dark night that was causing the terrible chill to run up my back. No, there couldn’t be such a thing. The system that governs the world by the name of reality couldn’t be that ruthless.
While my tangled thoughts intertwined I continued pedaling. I turned right on the highway into the hills. My deep tread block-tires acted as a shovel to bite and kick into the thin snow on the asphalt, accelerating my bike.
Before long, the shadow of a huge building appeared in front of me. Most of the lights were out, but a blue light flashed from the helipad on the roof like a will-o-the-wisp trying to attract victims to the castle of darkness.
A high iron fence appeared when I finished climbing the hill. I rode along it for tens of seconds longer. I finally reached the front gate, protected by especially tall gateposts.
Because it was a highly specialized medical facility it didn’t accept emergency cases. The gates were already tightly closed and the guard box was unmanned. I rode past the entrance to the main parking lot and entered through the small staff entrance.
I parked my bike at the end of the parking lot. It was too irritating to lock it up so I ran on. In the orange light cast by sodium floodlights I could see the parking lot was completely deserted. The silence was broken only by the snow falling from the sky, painting the world white. I continued running while exhaling clouds of steam with my rough breathing.
Half way across the vast parking lot, as I was about to pass between a tall dark-colored van and a white sedan, at that moment.
I almost collided with the shadow of a person rushing out from behind the van.
“Ah…”
‘Excuse me’, I was about to say while trying to dodge, something crossed my vision -
Flash, a vivid shine of metal slashed at me.
“- !?”
Right after, heat blossomed on my right arm, just below the elbow. At the same time a lot of white scattered. It wasn’t snow flakes. It was fine white feathers. The insulation from my down-jacket.
I staggered back, somehow colliding with the rear of the white sedan and managed to stop.
I could not understand the current situation. While stunned, I looked at the black shadow about two meters away from me. It was a man. He was wearing a suit that was nearly black. He was holding something long, slender, and white in his right hand. It shone dully in the orange light.
A knife. A large survival knife. But, why.
My face froze as I felt the stare of the man in the shadow of the van. He was moving his lips, but what came out was a hoarse whisper.
“You’re late, Kirito-kun. What if you make me catch a cold?”
That voice. It was a high-pitched, sticky voice.
“Su… Sugou…”
I was stunned, at the same time I called out his name, the man took a step forward. The sodium lamps illuminated his face.
Compared to a few days ago, his smooth combed hair had become severely disturbed and there were several days worth of beard covering his sharp jaw. His neck-tie was almost completely untied and hung loosely around his neck.
And also - strange eyes peered out at me from behind metal framed glasses. The reason was apparent at once. Even though his eyes were open as wide as possible, his left eye had dilated adapting to the darkness of night while his right eye was small and contracting. In the World Tree, that was were he was pierced with my sword.
“You did a cruel thing, Kirito-kun.”
Sugou said in a rasping voice.
“The sense of pain has not disappeared yet. Well, there are various good medicines, so it does not matter.”
His right hand thrust into his suit pocket, grabbed a few capsules and threw them in his mouth. With a Kacha Kacha sound he started chewing, and Sugou took another step toward me. Finally recovering from my shock, I managed to move my dry lips.
“- Sugou, you are already finished. You have gone too far to cover things up. Receive judgement obediently.”
“Finished? What? Nothing is over yet. Well, Recto is unusable now. I’ll go to America. There are a lot of companies which want my expertise. I have now accumulated a large amount of experimental data. If I use that to complete my study, I will become the true king - true god - this real world’s god.”
- He’s crazy. No, perhaps he had been broken for a long time.
“Before that, there are some issues I have to take care of. First, I will kill you, Kirito-kun.”
After he finished talking in a subdued voice without a change in expression, Sugou briskly approached me. The knife in his right hand casually moved toward my eyes.
“…!!”
I kicked off the asphalt with my right foot, trying to avoid it. However, because of the snow under my shoe, I slipped and lost my balance, collapsing on the parking lot. I landed hard on my left side, the breath leaving my body.
Sugou looked down at me with pupils which couldn’t seem to focus.
“Hey, stand up.”
After that, he kicked me in my thigh with the tip of his expensive shoe. Twice. Thrice. Hot pain ran up my spinal chord, echoing in the back of my head. It also reverberated through my right arm creating a sharp pain. I finally noticed that there was a cut not only in my jacket but also on my arm.
I could not move. I could not make a sound. The survival knife that Sugou was holding - the longer than 20 centimeter blade, the heavy pressure of that murderous tool, made me freeze.
Kill – Me - with that knife - ?
My fragmented thoughts flowed and disappeared. That thick blade, penetrating my body silently, deadly - as words showed talking my life with a fatal wound, I imagined that instant again and again. Besides that, there was nothing I could do.
The pain in my right arm became a dull heat. Several drops of dark liquid dripped from the gap between the cuff of my winter jacket and glove. I began to imagine the blood flowing from my body endlessly. A clear and real image of «death» which wasn’t a numerical value in a HP bar.
“Hey, stand up. Just stand up.”
Sugou mechanically kicked and stepped on my feet again and again.
&nb
sp; “You, what you said to me over there. Don’t run away? Don’t hesitate? Let’s settle this? You said them arrogantly.”
I heard him whisper, Sugou’s voice filled with the same colors of insanity as I heard in the darkness over there.
“You understand now? A little shit like you with no ability but games, and no true power at all. That’s what you call inferior trash. Nevertheless, you thwarted me, this me… Naturally, the punishment for your sins is death. It is impossible for it to be anything other than death.”
After speaking in a tone without inflection, Sugou put his left foot on my belly, and changed his center of gravity. From the physical pressure and the mental pressure as he released his madness, I lost my breath.
I watched Sugou’s face as he approached, taking shallow, irregular, rapid breaths. While bending, Sugou held the weapon in his right hand high above his head.
Without blinking, he swung it down.
“ - gh”
A stiff sound leaked from the back of my throat -
Along with a dull metallic sound, the tip of the knife grazed my cheek and dug into the asphalt at the same time.
“Ah… my right eye is blurry, my aim was off.”
Sugou muttered as he raised the knife high again.
The edge of the knife was dazzling in the light of the sodium lamps, and drew an orange line in the darkness.
Maybe it was because he hit the hard road with it, but the knife tip was slightly fragmented. That flaw gave the knife a more realistic physical presence as a weapon. Rather than a polygon weapon, it was made of condensed metal molecules, heavy and cold, and genuine lethal blade.
Everything seemed to slow down. Snow which fell from the dark sky. The mass of air expelled from Sugou’s mouth. The knife which was descending toward me. The blinking of the orange light reflected from the serrations carved in the blade.
That reminds me, there was a jagged weapon like that…
A piece of meaningless memory flowed to the surface of my stopped thought.
What was that? It was a dagger type item sold in the middle layers of Aincrad. I think it was called «Sword Breaker». If you parry the enemy’s weapon on the saw shaped back portion, there was a slight bonus increasing the chance of destroying their weapon. Because it seemed interesting, I placed the dagger skill in the skill slot and used it for a while, but wasn’t satisfied with it due to its low base offensive ability.
The weapon Sugou was holding now was even smaller than that. It couldn’t even be called a dagger. No - such a thing couldn’t even be categorized as a weapon. It was a tool for daily work. It wasn’t a thing a swordsman would use to fight.
In the depth of my ears, I heard Sugou’s words from a few seconds ago.
True power, possessing nothing of that - .
Yes… that’s right. It didn’t even need to be said. But who are you to be saying you would kill me, Sugou? A master of the knife skills? Martial arts expert?
I looked behind Sugou’s glasses, his small eyes seemed to be dyed the color of blood. Excitement. Madness. But they also held something else. Those were the eyes of someone trying to escape. Those were the same eyes that someone who was surrounded by hordes of monsters in a dungeon, falling into a desperate deadly situation, the eyes of someone who swung their sword in a frenzy, trying to intercept reality.
This guy was the same as me. Continuing to chase power, but unable to obtain it, just moving in ugly steps.
“…Die, you bratttt!!”
Suguo’s scream pulled my consciousness back from the world moving at slow speed.
I raised my left hand like a magnet and caught Sugou’s right wrist as he swung it down. At the same time, I stretched out my right arm and shoved my thumb into the hollow of his throat beside his loose tie.
“Guu!!”
With a grunt, Sugou leaned back. I twisted my body, grabbing Sugou’s right hand with both of my hands, and slamed his hand on the frozen asphalt with all my might. His hand came loose with a scream, and the knife rolled away on the road.
Screaming shrilly like a whistle, Sugou jumped toward the knife. I bent my right leg, letting it fly, my shoe’s sole impacting on his jaw. I scoop up the knife and used the recoil to stand up.
“Sugou…”
From my throat came a voice that cracked so badly that I could hardly believe it was my own.
Through the glove on my right hand, I felt the presence of the cold, hard knife. It was a poor weapon. Too light, with no reach.
“But it is enough to kill you.”
After whispering, I turned to Sugou who was looking up at me with a blank face while sitting on the asphalt, then sprang at him fiercely.
I grabbed his hair and head in my left hand and slammed it into the door of the van. With a dull sound the car’s aluminium body was dented, and his glasses flew away. Sugou’s mouth opened hugely. Aiming for his throat, I moved my right hand with the knife without hesitation -.
“Guu… Uuu…!”
I stopped my arm there, gritting my teeth.
“Iii! Hiii! Iiiii!!”
Sugou was making the same sound as he had in that world just ten minutes or so ago, with that high-pitched scream.
It was natural that this man die. It was natural that he be judged. It would all be over if I brought down my right hand. It was the settlement. The full victor and the defeated were decided.
However -.
I’m no longer a swordsman. That world where everything was determined by the skill of one’s sword has already been left far in the past.
“Hiiiiii…”
Suddenly, Sugou’s eyes rolled up into his head, exposing the whites. His scream broke off, and his whole body lost strength like a machine cut off from electricity.
Strength also left my hand. Slipping from my hand, the knife rolled onto Sugou’s stomach.
I also removed my left hand, and stood up.
I thought that if I had to see that man for even one more second, the impulse to kill would boil out, and I wouldn’t be able to resist it again.
I ripped off his tie and rolled him over, and tied both his hands behind his back. I placed the knife on the roof of the van. I whipped my body around, back onto my original path. Then I staggered, step by step, dragging my legs while starting to run across the parking lot.
It took about five minutes to get up the wide steps to the front entrance. I stopped and took a deep breath. I looked down at my body, which I had managed to get control of.
I was in a terrible state, dirtied with snow and sand. The cuts on my left cheek and right arm had apparently stopped bleeding, while still painful.
I stood in front of the automatic doors. However, there was no sign of them opening. I peered through the glass, the main lobby was dimly lit, but a normal light was on behind the receptionist’s desk. I looked from side to side. I found a small swinging glass door to the far left, and fortunately, it opened when I pushed it.
Silence filled the building. I crossed the orderly rows of benches that lined the vast lobby.
No one was at the counter, but from deep inside the adjacent nursing station, I heard pleasant chatter. Praying for a decent voice, I opened my mouth.
“Um… Excuse me!”
A few seconds after my voice echoed, a door opened and two nurses in light green uniforms appeared. They both had suspicous expressions on their faces which changed to shock when they got a good look at me.
“- What happened to you!?”
The tall, young nurse with her hair piled on her head exclaimed. Apparently, there seemed to be more bleeding on my face than I thought. I pointed in the direction of the entrance and said:
“I was attacked by a man with a knife in the parking lot. I left him unconscious on the other side of a white sedan.”
Tension ran through the two women’s faces. The older nurse operated a machine behind the counter, holding a small microphone near her face.
“Guards, please come to the first floor nurse station
immediately.”
There seems to have been a guard in the middle of patrol nearby, and a man in a deep blue uniform soon appeared with his running footsteps. The man’s expression became severe after hearing the nurses’ explanation. Speaking into a walkie-talkie, the guard went to the entrance. The younger nurse followed him.
After having looked at the wound on my cheek for a minute, the nurse who remained said:
“You, are the twelfth floor Yuuki-san’s family right? Is that your only wound?”
There seemed to be a small misunderstanding, but I nodded without the willpower to correct it.
“I see. I’ll call a doctor right away, please wait for me here.”
She ran off with a ‘pitter-patter’ as soon as she said that.
I took a deep breath and looked around. Confirming that no one was nearby, I leaned over the counter and grabbed one of the guest pass cards from inside. I turned to the opposite direction than where the nurse went, to the hospitalization ward which I had passed many times before, and whipped my trembling feet into a run.
The elevator had stopped at the first floor. When I pressed the button, the door opened with a low chime. I leaned against the inside wall and pushed the button for the top floor. Even though the acceleration was slow for a hospital, my knee felt nearly broken from the small extra weight. I desperately held my body up.
After what I felt to be several long seconds, the elevator stopped and the door opened. I fell out of the elevator into the passage.
Asuna’s room was only a few tens of meters away, but the distance seemed endless. I supported my body, which was just about to collapse, on the wall and moved forward. After turning left at the L shaped passage - in front of me, I saw a white door.
Step by step, I walked.
Same as that time -.
When I returned to the real world from the end of the virtual world surrounded by sunset, I woke up in another hospital, struggling to walk on withered legs. In my search for Asuna, there was nothing but to walk. That passage, was connected to this place.
I could finally meet her. The time had come.
As the remaining distance shrank, the various feelings in my heart grew at an alarming rate. My breathing sped up. The edges of my vision were dyed white. However, I did not succumb to collapsing there. I walked. Intently, putting my legs in front of me.
Sword Art Online - Volume 4 - Fairy Dance Page 17