“Mm-hmm.” Unable to see where this was going, Haruyuki forgot his own predicament a little and leaned forward. The time display in the right of his view was second by second approaching the fifteen-minute limit from the time he’d flown out of the house, but he wasn’t paying attention to that.
Last summer. So about ten months earlier. Right before Haruyuki became a Burst Linker at Kuroyukihime’s invitation.
Rin stared back at him with damp eyes and continued, “After meeting several times, she. Saw through. To my ‘mental scars.’ And then said there was another form. Of the city of Tokyo. And that there. Maybe I could find the answers I was looking for.”
“Your mental scars. Another Tokyo,” Haruyuki murmured, before belatedly understanding what those words meant.
The urban center of virtual Tokyo where boys and girls with pain in their hearts came together and fought. The Accelerated World, the hidden battlefield produced by the Brain Burst program.
“So then this person is your parent Burst Linker?”
“That’s. Right. My kind. Harsh Master,” Rin said, nodding, and Haruyuki gasped.
He had actually almost forgotten, but the girl before him was asserting that she was the Ash Roller. If that was true, then that meant the junior high student Rin had met in the hospital cafeteria was Haruyuki’s own teacher, the level-eight Burst Linker “Strong Arm” Sky Raker, aka Fuko Kurasaki.
He hesitated to actually say Raker’s real name out loud in case Rin was a hostile Burst Linker approaching him with some sort of hidden agenda, although that was hard to imagine at this point. Perhaps understanding what was in Haruyuki’s heart as he fell silent in a momentary indecisiveness, perhaps not, Rin slowly lowered her eyes.
“When I heard the explanation of the conditions for installing the program Brain Burst 2039…I—I thought it would be. Impossible. I only got my first Neurolinker right before I went to elementary. School.”
“So then you couldn’t meet the first condition…right?”
Rin bowed her head slightly in agreement.
The very first requirement to be able to install the Brain Burst program—to become a Burst Linker—was to have been wearing a Neurolinker since immediately after birth. Most parents wouldn’t go to that extreme unless they were very enthusiastic about child-rearing, or the exact opposite of that.
“I. Explained that. But Master smiled. And said. ‘I feel. The light of. A strong will in you. My. Instincts about this. Are never wrong.’”
This sort of gentle and kindly controlling statement did indeed sound like something Fuko would say. But although she might have been the “actually really scary Master Raker,” even Fuko couldn’t fake meeting the first requirement of Brain Burst. Haruyuki cocked his head to one side, and Rin once again lifted up the item she held in both hands.
“Then,” she said. “I. Remembered…when my brother—Rinta. Was little, he was a troublemaker. He wasn’t just going to be an ICGP rider. He was going to make me one, too. So when I was a baby. He used to sneak his Neurolinker onto me. My parents. Said he showed me race videos.”
“Y-your brother’s kind of amazing, huh?”
A stiff smile spread across her face, and she blinked in surprise. They might have been brother and sister, but a different person was still a different person. Even if her brother had put the Neurolinker on her, wouldn’t it have been impossible for her to activate it?
As if guessing the question in Haruyuki’s mind, Rin nodded. “A newborn’s brain’s not. Fully developed until they’re a toddler. So apparently, the particular brain wave pattern can’t always be read. Well. Of course, these are rare cases. But Rinta’s Neurolinker apparently recognized. Baby me as a user, too. And ever since I can remember. Until my parents bought me my own, I borrowed my brother’s sometimes. To read picture books. Do full dives. That was. This Neurolinker.”
What Rin held so carefully in both hands was a worn-out, metallic-gray wearable device.
As he stared at it incredulously, Haruyuki realized something. He hadn’t noticed it until now because of the gloom in the car, but in addition to the peeling paint and wear from normal use, the external plastic shell had a crack like a bolt of lightning racing across it, likely made in some kind of intense impact.
“My brother. Kept using the first Neurolinker he got as a kid all that time. He just changed the shell. To an adult size. He said he could race faster with it. After junior high, he didn’t go to high school. He went straight. Into the world of motorcycle racing. And. All this time…”
Although the ICGP races that Rin’s older brother, Rinta, was part of were old style with no AI control, the riders wore Neurolinkers for the bare-minimum AR display and communication with the pit.
In which case. The machine Rin held in her hands—
“That Neurolinker…In the crash two years ago, your brother was…?”
The girl moved her head slowly up and down at Haruyuki’s hushed question.
“My brother’s team’s. Coach gave it to me at the circuit. Where the accident was. He probably meant for it to be. A memorial. I think. Rinta’s life was saved, but ever since, he’s. Been in a coma. But it’s strange.” She cut herself off and smiled gently. “When Master was explaining. The installation of the BB program. I took off my own Neurolinker and tried putting this one on. The last time I’d borrowed it from my brother was. Right before I went to elementary school. A long time ago. Over eight years. I thought I wouldn’t be able to activate it anymore. But the machine. Worked.”
Haruyuki took a sharp breath. That meant that the girl before him, Rin Kusakabe, used two Neurolinkers, something that should not have been physically—or legally—possible.
Of course, as long as you weren’t a criminal or something misrepresenting yourself and up to no good, there wasn’t really any point in using multiple Neurolinkers. But using the Neurolinker she had used as a baby was probably an effective way to meet the conditions for installation of Brain Burst.
Because both the first condition of having worn a Neurolinker since infancy and the second condition of having long-term experience with full dives were, in the end, interrogating the affinity and responsiveness between brain and machine. Since there were individual differences in the Neurolinker quantum connection devices, it was possible that the machine you first used after you were born was the one your body—no, brain—was most familiar with.
“So then…the Brain Burst program isn’t in this green one now, but in your brother’s Neurolinker?” Haruyuki asked.
“Yes.” Rin bobbed her head up and down. “Since Master said we could only try to install it once. I was a little hesitant. Before. When I said it was strange. After I put on this Neurolinker. In the middle of the virtual flames from the BB program. When I was waiting for the indicator to advance. I heard. My brother’s voice.”
“Huh?”
“‘You race. Down your road.…I’m right behind you, pushing you forward.’” Eyes full of transparent tears, Rin smiled the clearest smile she had since this strange conversation began. She gently opened the lock arms of the battered Neurolinker as she continued. “The installation. Succeeded. But. When I first went with Master to the duel stage. And I saw my own avatar. Without thinking. I laughed.”
She stopped, and the slightest of giggles actually slipped out of her.
“Leather jacket, flashy helmet. The big, shiny American motorcycle. The machine my brother said he was going to. Ride for himself when he. Was a champion in Europe. It was that very. Machine. Telling me to. Go down my own path, and then. My avatar’s exactly like. His own dream. He really. Has always…”
Large droplets on the verge of spilling out were caught by her eyelashes, while Rin held the metallic-gray Neurolinker lovingly to her chest.
Haruyuki smiled at this gesture. “Right. So then, you in the Accelerated World—Ash Roller is like, um…maybe like role-playing? That tone, the style of fighting…you’re acting like you think your brother would?”
&nbs
p; Even still, the teary-eyed girl before him and the century-end rider in the Accelerated World were simply too far apart, but given the depths of her feelings toward her sleeping brother, he got the feeling that he might just barely get it.
While he forced himself to digest the situation, Rin looked up abruptly.
“It’s. Not. Weird, is it?” she said unexpectedly. “It’s. Cool, right?”
“Huh?! Cool? You mean, Ash?”
Her bobbing head sent her short hair swinging and then kept charging forward. Closing the distance between them, Rin spoke in a quiet but passionate voice. “The skull helmet. The spiky leather jacket. And the missiles on the bike are cute, too.”
The words were too startling coming from a girl raised quite properly, clad in the uniform of a rich girls’ school, and although Haruyuki bobbed his head up and down, his mouth stiffened up slightly. And then Rin took a sharp breath, as if coming back to herself, and dropped her head in embarrassed mode.
“I-I’m sorry. I. When it comes to the Accelerated World. I just get carried away. In duels, too, actually, it’s. Like that. Maybe because I get too. Lost in it. Thirty minutes goes by in the blink of an eye. Even when I come back to the real world, I don’t. Really remember. The duels.”
“I—I get it.” Haruyuki kept nodding and quickly considered the situation.
The sense he got from what Rin was saying now was that Ash Roller was not a simple performance, but rather to make it through the extreme and intense duels, a second self. So maybe she half-unconsciously borrowed her brother’s personality or something? When he got wound up in the Accelerated World, Haruyuki himself sometimes switched from his normal way of talking to something a little tougher, and his tone also got about one and a half times wilder, so it made sense.
As he became lost in thought, Haruyuki felt a slight change in the air, and lifted his eyes.
…To meet those of Rin fairly close up, after her earlier unprecedented push forward on the leather seat. The irises, still plenty damp, were tinged with gray and made him feel a depth like he was peeking into an ocean.
“But there is. Just one thing I remember. More clearly than memories of the real world.” Rin’s voice was thin and halting, as always, but it echoed as clearly as neurospeak through a direct cable in the sealed car.
To get his once again rapidly rising pulse under control, Haruyuki chanted to himself, She’s Ash Roller, she’s Ash Roller.
But…
The girl who was supposedly the insides of that century-end rider brought her face another centimeter closer and whispered in a weak and yet heated tone, “That’s. You. The first time we fought. We both won once, lost once. Ever since that day. The way you look, your voice. They’ve never. Disappeared from inside me.”
“…K-Kusakabe…” His thoughts, which had started to cool down, shot up again into the red zone, and Haruyuki opened and closed his eyes intently at top speed. Each time his eyelids cut across his field of view like a shutter, he felt like Rin’s damp eyes had gotten still closer.
“No other. Burst Linker even noticed it, but you. Figured out the structural features. Of an internal combustion engine motorcycle and defeated. Me. My brother always. Used to say, ‘Front wheel spinning? That’s no motorcycle.’ He was probably annoyed. At losing to you. Lower level and still a newbie on top of that. But I think. In his. Heart, he was also glad.”
The distance between their faces was already down to twenty centimeters, and Haruyuki’s brain, running at only 10 percent of capacity, couldn’t see the strangeness of what Rin was saying. And almost as if she was also not really aware of what she was saying—or doing, she continued to sidle up to him.
“But. The thing that’s most. Clearly carved into my mind is…you with your wings spread, flying in the sky. Faster than. Anyone. Piercing the wall of air. Almost like. Almost like my brother then. When he would race through full throttle on the circuit’s. Homestretch…”
And here, the large droplets that had been held back by her eyelashes through some curious equilibrium until that point spilled out onto her cheeks. The tears dripped down from her sharp, boyish jaw, and fell onto Haruyuki’s T-shirt.
“I. Liked watching you flying in the sky of the Accelerated World. I liked. Dueling with you, racing along at full speed on the ground. To chase you up in the air. The way you look. Like the materialization of the word speed itself.” Her voice shook, trembled, and stopped.
She lowered her eyes, and several tears that had formed anew spilled out. She took a deep breath and held it for a few seconds before suddenly continuing in a voice colored with grief. “But. But I. The foolish thing. I did. Without thinking of the consequences. I pushed you into. A dangerous situation.”
Huh? What’s she talking about? After a moment of confusion, Haruyuki finally remembered the predicament he was in.
Spurred on by anger, he had summoned the Armor of Catastrophe, and completely fused with it to become the sixth Chrome Disaster. And on top of that, to protect his Legion, he would have to draw the curtain on his life as a Burst Linker himself. The reason he had ended up in this situation was indeed as Rin said—the fact that he had seen the scene of Ash Roller’s death in the Unlimited Neutral Field.
And he had to say that the reason Ash had ended up back against the wall, repeatedly hunted by Olive Grab and the other five ISS kit wearers, was because he (or she) had ignored the instructions of his Master, Sky Raker, dove into the Unlimited Neutral Field earlier than the meeting time, and then traveled a dangerously long distance inside by himself. But he had done so because he was trying to save Bush Utan, who was like his younger brother. To help Utan—who, like Olive and the others, was parasitized by an ISS kit, but unlike them, was trying to break free of its control of his own will—Ash had moved under his own judgement. He’d had no choice. Who exactly could fault him for acting…
“Oh. Th-that reminds me.” Having gotten this far, Haruyuki finally reached the question he should have asked much earlier. “D-did you and Bush Utan make it out through a portal okay…?”
“Yes.” Rin leaned forward, perilously close to him. “Just as you instructed. As soon as we regenerated. We ran together, to Shibuya Station.”
“Y-you did?” Haruyuki let out a sigh of relief. “Good. That’s great.”
At that moment, Rin’s hanging head shook and tilted and bumped into the chest of his T-shirt.
Helplessly, Haruyuki froze completely, and a small hand pressed gently, but with sure power against his back. On the surface, it appeared that the two of them were alone in a car hugging, and in this situation, the chant “this girl is Ash” lost its efficacy. His internal brain clock dropped to the bare minimum, and yet his heart pounded out a beat at top speed…It was a contradiction with the mental clock acceleration of Brain Burst, wasn’t it?—
With the vestiges of mental ability left to him, Haruyuki considered ideas that bore no relevance to the current situation. Then, through the body pressed up against him, he heard an almost vanishing voice.
“I. Saw it. To save me and Utan, you. Summoned that terrifying Enhanced Armament. That’s the Armor of Catastrophe, right? If only I hadn’t. Gotten in the way, it was supposed to be. Purified today.”
Unable to answer yes or no, he simply opened and closed his mouth. Rin’s hair so close to his respiratory organs was shining finely, the faint smell of flowers drifting up from it. As he took in the sweet scent, Haruyuki was aware of a strange sensation rapidly surging up from the depths of his heart. It resembled panic or anxiety, but it was a little different. A sad throbbing, like being stabbed with a soft needle.
“Me being saved. Just me. And you not. Being able to fly in the Accelerated World. It’s wrong.”
Without being aware of it, Haruyuki had been on the verge of trying to take some kind of action when Rin started speaking again, and his hands froze in midair, dangerously close.
“I mean. The reason I’ve been. Able to keep fighting in the beautiful and cruel world. Is bec
ause you were there. Because I wanted to. See you flying in the sunset of the Twilight stage. In the Century End stage, reflecting the bonfires. In the bus on my way to school. Back home. I would think about whether I’d challenge you. Or you’d maybe challenge me. I. Looked forward to it.”
Here, the thin, passionate voice cut off, and Rin lifted her face. She looked straight at Haruyuki, tears dripping from her eyes, and the girl who was the Ash Roller—the roaring, racing century-end rider, Haruyuki’s hya-ha-ha-ha, mega-lucky eternal rival—released a single sentence from her cherry-colored lips.
“I like you.”
Instantly, all activity in his body shut down—at least subjectively—and the abdominal and spinal muscles that had supported Rin’s meager weight until that point went limp.
Thud! They fell onto the seat with Haruyuki on the bottom. The five-door hatchback by the famed Italian manufacturer was plenty spacious in the rear, but of course, Haruyuki bumped his head on the inside of the door. But this impact might well never have happened. Because the sensation of contact along the front of his body and the destructive power of the words just uttered had begun to peel his soul from his physical body.
“B-but…” Although it was completely turned inside out and totally hoarse, the fact that he somehow managed to produce a voice in response was essentially a miracle. “But in the real, I’m like this.”
Haruyuki at that moment didn’t even have the extra brainpower to think he was pathetic, spitting something like that out at this stage of the game.
But not only did Rin not pull away from him, she pressed her body closer as she whispered in a teary voice, “I. Actually found out your. Real a little while ago.”
“What…H-how?”
“It’s just. After our duel on Kannana Street, you were standing forever. In the position where your avatar appeared. On the pedestrian bridge. I passed under you. On the bus.”
The Seven-Thousand-Year Prayer Page 11