She ignored the sharp pain in her hands and shoulders, and walked two steps forward. She pointed the gun at the center of the man who had risen about 20cm from the ground.
The third shot dislocated her right shoulder. This time she didn’t support her body and was blown away by the recoil, and fell head over heels to the floor. Even so, the pistol did not leave her hands.
Just as before, the bullet fired violently from the pistol greatly deviated from her target by about 10cm upward—
It hit almost the exact center of the man’s face. With a thud, the man’s head hit the floor. He no longer moved or yelled.
Shino desperately held her body up to confirm that the man had stopped moving.
—Protected.
Before anything, she thought. She protected her mother.
Shino moved her head, to look at her mother who was still on the floor a few meters away. And, the mother she loved more than anyone else in the world…
Was looking directly at Shino. Fear and panic clearly showing in her eyes.
Shino looked down at her hands. Her hands still holding the pistol were covered with dark red liquid droplets.
Shino opened her mouth, and finally started issuing a shrill scream.
“Aaaa…!!”
As a thin cry tore out from the depths of her throat, Shino continued to stare at the Procyon SL clenched in both of her hands. She could see the blood dripping from the back her hands to her fingers. No matter how many times she blinked, it didn’t disappear. Drip, drip. The sticky drops fell to her feet.
Suddenly, liquid started to overflow from both of her eyes. With a soft distortion, her sight was completely covered by the black radiance of the model gun.
In the depths of the darkness, she could see that man’s face.
The third wave of bullets flew toward his face. The wounds were surprisingly small where the bullet shells hit, looking somewhat like moles. However, immediately afterward, a red mist drifted out from the back of his head. All expression and life bled out from his face.
But, abruptly, the left eye alone moved and the pupil, looking like a bottomless pit, gazed at Shino.
It looked straight into Shino’s eyes.
“… Ah … ah … … … …”
Suddenly, her tongue stuck to the back of her throat and she couldn’t breathe. At the same time, she felt her stomach violently constricting.
Shino clenched her teeth, mustered all of her willpower and threw the Procyon to the floor. Immediately, with teetering steps, she ran to the kitchen and turned the doorknob of the bathroom with her right hand, cold and wet with sweat.
At the same time that Shino lifted the toilet lid, hot liquid gushed out from the bottom of her stomach. Until everything in her stomach was discharged, she vomited, again and again, causing her body to twist and spasm.
When the contractions of her stomach had finally settled down, Shino was exhausted.
Her left hand extended to flush the toilet. With a bit of difficulty, Shino rose and, after taking off her glasses, she washed both of her hands and face over and over again with sharp, cold water from the washbasin.
Lastly, she rinsed her mouth, took a clean towel from the shelf and, while wiping her face, left the bathroom. She could not think clearly.
On unsteady legs, Shino returned to her room.
Averting her gaze from it as much as possible, Shino covered the model gun that had rolled onto floor. Lifting it up over the cloth, she immediately threw it to the back of the open drawer. Noisily, Shino closed the drawer and, exhausted, fell face down onto the bed.
Water droplets from her wet bangs and her flowing tears mixed together on her cheeks and soaked her futon. Unconsciously, in a small voice, she mumbled the same thing over and over again.
“Help me… someone… help me… save me… anyone…”
Her memory of the several days right after the robbery incident were not very clear.
When the adults dressed in the navy blue uniform said, in a tense tone, to pass over the gun, her finger had stiffened and, no matter how hard she had tried, would not come loose.
Around her, there were many red lights and yellow tape shaking in the wind. The white light shining from over there dizzied her eyes.
After she was finally picked up by the patrol car, she noticed the pain in her right shoulder. When she timidly appealed, the policeman moved her over to an ambulance—she remembered only bits and pieces of the rest.
While in a hospital bed, two policewomen repeatedly asked about the incident. Even though she said many times that she wanted to see her mother, her request could only be granted afterward.
Shino was discharged after about three days and she returned to her grandparents’ house, but her mother’s hospitalization lasted over a month. They could no longer return to the mild ordinary days from before the incident.
Due to the voluntary restraint of the media, further details about the incident were avoided in the news. The death of the suspect of the post office armed robbery was reported to the prosecutor, but a trial was not held even once. However, it was a small town incident. The details of what happened inside the post office leaked out—and more than that, they were blown up and exaggerated and they spread through the entire town like a prairie fire.
In the year and a half left of elementary school, Shino was peppered with every derivative of «murderer». Since entering middle school, the insults were replaced with complete disregard.
However, for Shino, the state of her surroundings were not much of a problem. From the beginning, Shino had very little interest in belonging to a group.
But the scar left in her heart by the incident - no matter how many years had passed, they didn’t heal and continued to torment Shino.
Since then, just looking at anything similar to a gun would force Shino to vividly recall the memory of the incident and experience the symptoms of a violent shock: hyperventalation, body rigidity, loss of orientation, vomiting, or, in the worst cases, fainting. While these attacks were certainly induced by laying eyes on a toy gun held by a child by the roadside, they could easily be induced even through a TV screen.
Therefore, Shino became unable to watch most dramas and movies. There had also been several times where she had attacks while watching the video teaching materials used in her social science class. Comparatively, books were safe—old works of literature devoid of firearms, especially. So, for the majority of middle school, she passed time in a dim corner of the school library, turning pages of large, complete works.
She appealed to her grandparents that when she graduated middle school, she wanted to work somewhere far away, and was met with strong opposition. Her grandparents wanted her to go to high school. So, Shino said that if she were to attend high school, at least, like long ago, she wanted to attend one in the neighborhood of Tokyo where she had lived with her father and mother. While she certainly wanted to go to a place where there were no rumors and curious stares that always followed her around, more than that, she was confident that as long as she stayed in this town, the wounds in her heart would never recover in her lifetime.
Of course, Shino’s symptoms were diagnosed as typical PTSD, and in four years, she received countless counseling. She obediently took the prescribed medicine. But the words of the doctors, along with something strangely resembling a smile on their face, could only go so far as to touch the surface of Shino’s heart—scratch it—unable to truly reach the wounded place. In a clean examination room, while listening to them repeat the words ‘I understand. It was very painful. It was very hard,’ Shino mumbled the same phrase over and over again in her mind.
—If that is the case, have you ever killed someone with a gun?
Now, on reflection, she realized that that attitude hindered the building of trust and shunned any treatment. Nevertheless, even now, that was her undisguised intention. Was what she did good or evil? A clear, decisive answer to that was probably the only thing that Shino wished for. But
of course, a doctor who could answer that question does not exist.
However, no matter how much pain her memory and attacks caused, she never once thought of killing herself.
She did not regret pointing that gun at that man and pulling the trigger. When her mother was held at gunpoint, there wasn’t any other choice for Shino. Even if she returned to the instant of that incident, without a doubt, she would have done the same thing.
But if Shino chose the escape of suicide, even that man would turn in his grave, or so she thought.
That’s why she wanted to become strong. In that situation, there was only one course of action, though she still desired the strength to say so. Strength, like on the battlefield, where female soldiers defeated their enemies mercilessly. It was because of this that she wanted to try living alone.
When she left the town in which she graduated middle school, the only ones to whom she bid farewell were her grandfather, her grandmother, and her mother, who embraced her and stroked her hair. She would always recognize her as the young child before the incident.
She moved to a place where the air was dirty, the water was hard to drink, and everything was expensive.
And then, she met Shinkawa Kyouji and the VRMMORPG «Gun Gale Online».
Finally, her breath and pulse settled down, and Shino opened her eyes.
Lying face down on her bed, her left cheek on her pillow, in front of Shino’s gaze was a full length mirror.
In the mirror, with wet hair clinging to her forehead, a girl looked back. A bit too skinny, with just her eyes appearing large. The nose was small and the lips thin. All in all, she appeared similar to a malnourished kitten.
The sniper rifle user of the wilderness, Sinon. Her build and the hairstyle with short hair tied on both sides of her face resembled Shino, but except for that, nothing else. That girl, as it were, was a fierce wildcat.
Though extremely scared, when she first logged into GGO and was taken to that battlefield not knowing anything, Shino discovered something unexpected. It was very different from the real world’s Japan, as the landscape was too much like another world. And in that world, if she tried to touch any kind of gun - no, even if she shot down other players, some of the tension would be remembered to some degree, but those detestable fits would not occur.
Shino was confident that she had finally found a way to overcome that memory. In fact, because she tried playing GGO, if she looked at pictures, the attacks no longer happened to some degree, and she seemed able to talk to Kyouji about the weapons in GGO.
No, it wasn’t only that. Half a year ago, when she received the huge yet brutal rifle named «Hecate II», the current Shino was in love. While other girls her age had pets or stuffed animals to do so, Shino relaxed while stroking the smooth barrel, and if she leaned her cheek on the round stock, she felt warm.
Together with this gun, in the virtual wilderness, if she continues to fight, someday, her wounds will close and her fears will vanish. Believing that, she blew away innumerable monsters and players with certain kill bullets.
However.
Really? Is this really all right?
A voice in her heart asked back.
Sinon was already, out of tens of thousands of GGO players, someone in the top thirty. She freely commanded the anti-materiel rifle unlike anyone else at the level of actual combat. She could give anyone she captured in her scope certain death with her unstoppable bullets. A warrior with a heart of ice. It was not an exaggeration to say that was the existence the former Shino hoped to become.
And yet—the real world’s Shino, as usual, can’t even hold a model gun.
Truly… truly… is this all right?
The eyes of the girl in the mirror were, behind her glasses, shaking and seemed to be at a loss.
These glasses she began to wear last year did not have any prescription. They weren’t for eye correction, but were for «protective equipment». The strong NXT polymer-made lenses, for example, would not break even if a bullet hit it—or so it was written in the leaflet. She doesn’t know if it was true or not but, she economized her living expenses and the manufactured glasses gave Shino a modest sense of security. Now, when she goes out, if she doesn’t always wear them, she won’t calm down.
But, in short, she relies on this small accessory.
She closed her eyes tightly and again, a frail question was born in her chest.
Someone … tell me … what should I do … ?
—No one will save me!!
A cry from her heart called her to reject and erase the weak voice within her, and Shino rose up. In front of her eyes, on top of a small table beside her bed, the silver circle on her Amusphere was shining.
It just wasn’t enough. That was the problem.
Twenty-one gunners stronger than Sinon still existed in that world. Crush those players, send them to hell, and simply dominate the wilderness as the strongest player of Gun Gale Online, and that would be when -
Shino would completely become Sinon and, in the real world, would be able to gain true strength. «That guy» and «that gun» were, until now, buried in the many targets that Sinon killed and never again will that memory rise up.
Shino picked up the air conditioner remote, turned on a weak heating, took off the jacket of her uniform in one stroke and tossed it away. She undid the hook of her skirt, pulled it from her legs, collected everything and tossed it on her floor. Lastly, she took off her light blue glasses and softly placed them on a corner of her writing table.
She immediately laid on the bed, picked up the AmuSphere, and put it over her head.
With some fumbling, she turned on the power and as soon as the electronic sound informed her of being in standby, she opened her mouth.
“LINK START”
That murmured voice, like a child tired from crying, cracked helplessly.
Chapter 5
After the browser opened, it automatically accessed the site with the start-up URL. Many double-layered windows were displayed.
They were all related to Gun Gale Online, in particular, a collection of information focused on «Death Gun».
«He» used his right index finger to operate the 3D mouse, making the current most relevant site active. On the front page with the words «death gun information summary site», only the words ‘Death Gun’ were red.
Looking at the history first, it seemed the administrator hadn’t made any new updates tonight. He then moved to the message board. Some new ones were written since last night’s check, and the status tree was flashing «NEW» icon here and there. He read them in sequence.
—Those two, Zekushiido and Tarako haven’t appeared. Has it been one month? Maybe their accounts were irresponsibly disconnected? Someone who can contact them in real world, if you have any information share it PLZ.
—Told you there wasn’t any. It was said no one in their squadron knows how to contact them real life. Also, whoever discloses personal information in GGO is a fool.
—Since we know the day and time that Death Gun shot them, if those two really died, will we know if we can find any VRMMO player that died around that time?
—Don’t loop the topic, read the past log. For a person living alone, no one will notice if they die. We already checked that, asking the police won’t get any answers. Incidentally, if you ask Zasker with an English mail, they will send the standard response related to user’s personal information.
—As I thought it could be that Zeku-tan and Tarako-tan wanted some excitement for their retirement commemoration. You two, if you don’t come out and expose the truth soon, the impact will be lost.
—After all, someone has to use his body as a test, I think. In this case, tomorrow at 2330 I will wear a red rose at my chest and wait in front of the Gurokken central bank’s front. Death Gun-san please shoot me.
—Hero debut! But if you don’t expose your real name and address before you die, it would be meaningless.
—Or rather please use a Net Cafe for a p
ublic dive.
—……
«He» clicked his tongue in annoyance. He moved the mouse wheel to make the next window active. However, no matter which message board or information site, he could not find the desired article or written message.
Originally he envisioned, after two people had died, “Is «Death Gun»’s power real?” That kind of rumor would spread around the net, with GGO players wondering in fear if they were the next target, having people retire from the game—that was what was supposed to happen.
However right now, the foolish net gamers still had not realize «Death Gun»’s real terror, and ended it with talk of jokes. The total number of GGO user accounts had hardly been reduced.
Also, that the real world death of «Zekushiido» and «Usujio Tarako» had not been reported was beyond his calculation. It seemed there was a large number of strange death incidents in the city every day, and if it wasn’t a clear crime case, it won’t be on the news.
Of course, the hearts of two people «He» shot were definitely stopped in the real world, and he knew they died. That was «Death Gun»’s power.
«He» had a strong temptation to write that information on the summary site’s message board. However, it would be hard for him to provide a concrete source for his information, and if he did that then it would weaken the legend of «Death Gun». «Death Gun» will be the first and last absolute warrior to descend on that wilderness, suppressing the management company’s power, a real god of death.
Well, fine.
«He» took a deep breath to calm down.
Soon the third «Bullet of Bullets» will be held. «Death Gun» will take part in the tournament, again kill two, if possible three people, that is the plan. Of course he has to pass the preliminary without using that gun. For that day, if he logs in 20 hours a day to train his stats, it will certainly be possible.
BoB is subject to a great degree of attention. «MMO Stream» will broadcast it in real time, and not only GGO but other VRMMO players will be watching it as well. He will not only reign on that large stage in name and reality as strongest, but if the people he shot with that gun disappeared from the net, then there won’t be any foolish people who would doubt «Death Gun»’s power.
Sword Art Online - Volume 5 - Phantom Bullet Page 11