by Nikita Thorn
Ikumi took a moment to comprehend his question. “I guess the style reminded me of my sister’s dance troops. You know, my sister Ibumi. Dance is an Inner Palace feature and Ibumi’s unlocked a few maiko so far. The troops are upgradeable like your War Games unit.”
“Oh, that makes perfect sense.” Despite the incomplete explanation, Seiki felt another flood of relief. The game was designed to cater to different interests; it was not surprising that people choosing the Court route would also have their own version of troops. If these dance troops worked like his unit, a player would be able to save choreographed movements and activate them like Formations.
“So instead of armor and equipment, you can… well, choose their dance costumes from a huge list of options. I’ve seen my sister’s collection of what she has unlocked so far.”
“And has she seen something like this?” Seiki opened his palm to show the houshi the hairpin, keeping one finger wrapped around its length.
“She has!” cried Ikumi. Then her expression darkened as she pieced it together in her head and lifted her gaze to look at him. “The Himawari Room?”
“Yeah. This came off an NPC. I think it will fade away as soon as I let go of it.”
The houshi nodded. “Yes. This looks exactly like the kind of headdress you can put on a dancer.”
“Are masks included in the list of costumes?” Seiki wondered if all his masked hosts in the Himawari Room had been players or if some had been NPCs in disguise. None of them had acted in any way that would be impossible for dance troops to do.
“I don’t recall Ibumi having masks in her collection,” said Ikumi. “But she hasn’t progressed very far with the dance troops. I’ll definitely ask her to look into it.”
“Whoever it was in the Himawari Room has unlocked, uh, at least forty of them,” said Seiki. “I don’t know what currency you need for that or how many Favors, but, they had… resources.”
Seiki placed the pin on the floor. As expected, it faded away a second later.
Akuma was eyeing him. “Wanna talk about it?”
“Not yet.” Seiki’s mind was preoccupied with developing thoughts. Even with this particular mystery solved, he still had many more to figure out. “I- uh, yeah, thanks for this. And sorry to interrupt your, uh, whatever it is you were doing.”
Kazuki smiled as he nodded toward the ceramic clock on the floor. “We’re just looking at what completing a hundred percent of Festival Clan Achievement got us, which happens to be this thing.”
Suzuyo sighed. “I was hoping it would be… books. A book. You know, lore, poems, something.”
Kazuki gestured to the room. “Well, I’m glad you made it here. We invited most of our freelancers, and so people are popping in and out. You can also check our records. Ikumi put everything in our clan box, so most of the stuff in our library is accessible right now. Feel free to look around, and talk to any of the Attendants if you want your dinner. It’s an eight-course meal, and you can go out on the deck for the view and get it served there.”
Now that Seiki had time to take in what was going on in the room, he had to admit to being a little fascinated. It looked like a proper party, and in any other circumstance he would probably stay to explore what it had to offer. Right now, however, he was still operating on an adrenaline high that sharpened his senses and numbed his emotions, and so he excused himself and left.
“No one tried to kill me this time,” Seiki reported as he stepped back into Kentaro’s Sumire Room on the third floor. He was not sure if his friends found it funny, and he suddenly remembered he had not specified his destination when he rushed out of the room earlier. “I went to ask the Society about the hairpin, and they confirmed it. Ikumi confirmed it’s a dance troop. We were right. It’s just loopholes, and it might not even be that difficult to figure out how they’re doing it…”
His friends looked as if they were about to bombard him with questions, and Seiki quickly added, “But it’s a lot to unpack, so if you don’t mind, could we just… uh, get dinner first?”
“Oh, uh, of course,” said Mairin.
“And we should steal the Society’s idea and go out on the deck.”
“Good idea,” said Kentaro.
Seiki let out an apologetic sigh. “It’s just… I don’t want to make tonight about… them.”
Mairin smiled. “Got it. Don’t worry. It’s going to be all about food from now on.”
They quickly got settled, and Seiki soon found himself in the cool open air of the spacious wooden deck. There were additional floor cushions they could grab from a cabinet within the room, which were of slightly questionable comfort, but it was more than made up for by the view of Shinshioka’s moonless night sky, where the White Dragon was silently circling back and forth above the forest of dark roofs.
As the host, Kentaro activated his Sumire Room Kaiseki Tray, and soon Banquet Attendants came to place a paper lamp next to each guest in order to make sure they got to appreciate the full visual aesthetics of the meal. Despite the gentle flickering firelight, the deck was still dim enough to afford Seiki the feeling of privacy, and he slowly let tension bleed out of him as he listened to his friends discuss the dinner.
“Seven courses, right?” said Yamura.
“Yeah, there’s a menu here.” Mairin picked up a piece of paper the Banquet Attendant had brought with the lamps. “And here’s a poem about the Festival and how the meal is supposed to represent Shinshioka’s abundance.”
Determined to let himself fully enjoy the night, Seiki blocked everything else from his mind to concentrate on the upcoming experience. Luckily, as soon as the first course was served, he found that it took very little effort on his part.
On the tray was a selection of bite-sized appetizers presented like tiny sculptures: raw sweet shrimp with a dab fresh ground wasabi, creamy sea urchin topped with salmon roe, grilled eel wrapped around a ball of sushi rice, crispy fried lotus root and roasted ginko nuts on a bed of salt, a slice of sweet pan-fried rolled egg, and a cube of cold black sesame tofu served in its own bowl with a tiny wooden spoon. The course also came with a cup of sweet plum wine to function as an aperitif.
Ippei picked up the cup. “To… our dear Lord Shogun, who sponsored this meal.”
“I’m impressed,” said Seiki honestly. “The Shogun isn’t usually this generous.”
Mairin smiled. “When you need the game to go offline for five hours, you just throw food at us and no one complains.”
They dug in, commenting on the taste of each of the appetizers, each refreshingly novel and each a one-time experience, as they were all gone in a bite. Yamura stayed until the end of the first course, before he announced that he had several other invitations to get to.
“What can you do when you’re a popular guy and everyone wants you in their party? I’ll report back what the fourth floor has.”
Mairin giggled. “I can’t believe you can still eat after, like, five bowls of the hotpot earlier.”
“Thanks to Kentaro’s foresight.” Yamura grinned as he flashed the mid-grade Heii-san Potion he had gotten from the houshi, which promised to cure any minor physical ailments, including discomfort resulting from overeating.
The meal continued and Seiki and his friends drifted into casual conversation, ranging from what everyone got from their personal reward boxes to what plans were needed for the next progression War Instance, the Battle of Kehara, which should be available immediately after the Festival ended and which Ippei was hoping to run with the West Defenders’ secondary raid group. They also discussed the Festival itself, speculating on what important clans managed to achieve and who else had been rewarded with the strange ceramic clock the Society had received. It turned out that pure Crafters were given a slight advantage and unlocking the herb garden for his clan had been an important step for Kentaro that eventually contributed to him earning rights to the Sumire Reception Room.
“Where you get more crafting stuff,�
�� said Mairin, referring to the hotpot, which had been in Kentaro’s reward box from the third floor.
“It automatically spawns stock and basic ingredients,” said the houshi proudly. “Perfectly portable, too. I’ve always wanted something like that.”
The meal continued, and Kentaro’s several friends from the Crafters’ Guild took turns to drop by, as well as other friends he and Mairin shared from the Social Guild, who seemed to be on a self-assigned quest to visit as many banquet instances as possible. Out of consideration for Seiki’s unvoiced desire for down time, they had strictly kept their guests off the deck, and Seiki was grateful for it.
The next two courses included a palette-cleansing clear soup, followed by a selection of sashimi served on a gigantic oyster shell packed with ice, with seafood names Seiki had never even heard of and whose varied tastes he had no words to describe, except that most of them melted very pleasingly in the mouth.
The fourth course consisted of three types of fatty beef slices, which guests could cook on a small personal charcoal grill that came with the set. The flavors came in a wide variety, from rich sweet miso to garlic to soy sauce with white sesame.
And when Seiki thought nothing could top that, there came a platter of simmered lobster and two kinds of crabs, served with a small bowl of salty soup that was somewhere between broth and bisque and that perfectly complemented the exquisite texture of the seafood.
To end the meal, the sixth course was a bowl of steamed rice flavored with seaweed and bamboo shoot, a serving of miso soup and assorted pickled vegetables, followed by a dessert of sakura, orange and pomegranate jelly.
The portions themselves were not large, and were enough just to give the feeling that you would want a few bites more, but they slowly added up over the seven courses, and after he put the spoon down on the empty jelly bowl, Seiki was beyond satisfied.
The drinks turned out to be as free-flowing as Kentaro had advertised, and they continued to linger on the deck to enjoy a generous supply of chilled sake, which was fortunately much better than what was available for free out in a Wilderness shrine. Kentaro and Mairin occasionally went indoors to greet friends who dropped by for a chat, and Seiki soon felt grounded enough to start silently recollecting what had happened in the Himawari Room while he continued to discuss random war strategies with Ippei.
It was not until Seiki was 32% intoxicated and the whole front half of the White Dragon was already glowing brighter than the rest of the body that he finally turned to look at Ippei.
It was during a break in the conversation after a large group of party-goers from the Social Guild had dropped by and both Mairin and Kentaro had gone indoors to greet them. Someone hyped up the new hotpot and Kentaro was obliged to take it out to show them, resulting in the start of a smaller separate party, whose lively noises Seiki found rather comforting to listen to from the relative darkness on the deck outside.
The samurai was reaching for the sake bottle. He glanced up as he noticed Seiki looking his way.
“They wanted the Shadow Key,” said Seiki quietly. They had not discussed the Himawari Room at all since the start of the meal, but it was clear to his friend what he meant.
Ippei set down the bottle. “So they know what it does?”
“I think so. They tried to tell me it was a glitched item and that they’re looking to complete their… glitch collection.”
“So they don’t know we know.”
“I don’t think so.”
“That’s good news.”
“They wanted to buy it. Not with gold but with… equipment. A dagger with 22% energy regeneration and stacking speed.”
Ippei’s eyes widened. “You’re kidding.”
Seiki let out a grim chuckle. “I gotta stop getting myself into situations where I have to refuse ridiculously good gifts. But… they did their homework and really didn’t like it when I said no.”
“I bet.” Ippei thought for a moment. “To be honest, I don’t know if I could have said no to those stats.”
Seiki recounted very briefly what had happened, and elaborated his theory about how NPC dance troops could be used to circumvent the non-PVP rule. If the dancers really worked like war units, the movements could be rehearsed. Seiki knew he could save any kinds of movements to his unit’s Formation Slot, even something as simple as ducking. There was no reason to believe dance units could not be trained the same way to crouch down and grab hold of someone. “I asked the Society and they said it should be possible. Like, this could be the civil court version of war troops.”
The more Seiki thought about it, the clearer it was that the encounter had been a meticulously scripted show. The display of abundance and generosity was solely to impress him. He had no doubt the trade offer was real, meant to be irrefusable, and so turning it down was taken as a slight.
“I’m not sure how many of them there were,” said Seiki. “Since the dancers were NPCs, and the other masked people didn’t even speak, so maybe they were also NPCs. Maybe these people are a smaller group than we thought. But considering they could get the Himawari Room, they’re probably very high level.”
Ippei nodded thoughtfully. “So… mysterious high level players are after the Shadow Keys. The Society, which has the most advanced knowledge of the game, has a Shadow Key. The first clan to have a member reach max level also has a Shadow Key.”
“Plus a unique now,” Seiki added, before proceeding to tell his friend about the unique whip that had turned up in the Rogami territory. “And these people have a way to escape showing up in logs, so I’m sure they were somehow responsible for putting the unique there.”
Ippei pondered for a moment. “Why our specific Shadow Key, though? If they know we have one, they also know about the Society’s, and the Rogami’s.”
“They also wanted us to get the rest for them,” said Seiki.
“Why you?” asked Ippei.
Seiki thought for a moment as he recalled something disturbing. “They knew my real name.”
Ippei stared.
“They called me by my real name. It wasn’t a slip. It was deliberate, you know, a threat.” He paused as he realized the full implication of the attack. Despite the amount of research the masked players had done, they still missed a lot of things. They had no idea Seiki and his friends had suspected the true function of the Shadow Key. They might not have been aware of other things, like his recent Earth-link Enchantment on his hand guard, which meant they had not intended for him to escape the predicament. Slitting his throat while keeping him paralyzed would mean putting him at their mercy, choking on blood, until they decided to let him go.
Seiki suppressed a shiver. Suddenly, in comparison, what the Rogami Clan had tried out in a Wilderness spirit shrine seemed like child’s play. “But then someone said they had crossed the line. There was someone else who… didn’t agree they should have gone that far. Were they going for good cop bad cop?”
Ippei’s expression was grim. “I need to talk to Katsumasa about this to see if—”
“No,” said Seiki before he could think.
Ippei looked at him.
Seiki sighed. “I know what you have to say about bullies, but this is something different. You know, the main person who called herself Okugata… she’s different. It’s beyond playing. It’s like she’s living it. The way she talks about this game… It’s real. I mean, I can… relate,” he finished uneasily. “I know this sounds terrible. I’m not excusing what they did, but I can understand where they’re coming from.”
Seiki could not help suspecting that Okugata and her crew most likely recognized something in him that they could relate to as well, which was why they had singled him out. After all, even Hatsuo had said that of all people, he was one of the few that had something to lose.
“They were selling me a fantasy, you know, the any-East-Gate-territory-just-name-it kind of fantasy.”
“They said that?”
“Pretty
much, and I believe them. And they were dead serious about the hunt for Shadow Keys, to the point of creating a clan to sub out quests so they can track our progress.”
“Okay, I see,” said Ippei. “It was essentially a recruitment pitch.”
Seiki opened his mouth but could not deny it.
“Wait. Who’s recruiting who again?” Mairin suddenly popped back onto the deck. “You mean the scary masked people wanted you to join their cult?”
“You came back at the right moment, Foxy,” said Ippei. “Just in time for the essence of the whole thing.”
Mairin frowned as she plopped down on the floor and set down several plates of crispy snacks. “What’s the logic of their approach? Here, we’re going to stalk you and invade a clan territory you’re in so hopefully you’ll join us?”
“It was all part of the show. It was bait, to get me curious, to get me to… invest.” Seiki let out a deep breath.
A chilly wind swept across the deck, suddenly calling his attention to how open it was, with nothing separating the area from the full view of Shinshioka. “They… you see, they know I’ve got nothing else.”
Mairin blinked. “No, Seiki…”
“They’re completely right, though.” Seiki let out a shaky laugh. “Maybe that’s why they picked me. I had every reason to say yes. In a way, I wanted to say yes. This place is… well, you can’t imagine how much I want it to be real.”
“Nothing wrong with that,” said Mairin empathetically. “Kiku always says it can be as real as you want it to be.”
Seiki nodded. “Yeah. But the same thing isn’t true for real life. You can will the game to be real. You can’t will real life not to. And that was why they thought they could threaten me with it.”
At the back of his mind, he could not help wondering if they had been a little more patient, a little more honest, a little more respectful for his own autonomy, if he could have been swayed. If Okugata had not lost her temper, if she had let him walk out, and mull it over and consult with his friends, if she had let him believe he was going to be part of something secret and special, if he had not met his friends at all, or if he had not wholeheartedly trusted them to stick up for him and support whatever he decided.