Shrine Maiden of the Sacred Fire

by Reki Kawahara

  Huh?

  There was no doubt that the voice he had just heard was Kuroyukihime’s. And she had called Utai by her first name, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Which meant the person Utai Shinomiya said she knew on the student council was, in fact, the vice president, Kuroyukihime. Was that it? But what on earth could those two have in common?!

  He stopped in his tracks, head reeling in confusion, and a new line of text scrolled across the chat tool still displayed in his field of view.

  UI> THE CLEANING’S FINISHED. THIS GENTLEMAN HERE WORKED VERY HARD ALL BY HIMSELF TO FINISH IT FOR ME.

  “This gentleman? Where?”

  Hearing the suspicion in Kuroyukihime’s voice, Haruyuki realized he couldn’t lurk in the hallway any longer and so stepped awkwardly out of the shadows to cross the threshold. Head still hanging, he reached a hand behind him to close the door before nervously lifting his gaze.

  Seeing the Umesato Junior High student council office for the first time, he found it much larger than he had expected. In the middle of the room was an elliptical meeting table, while a long office desk had been placed farther in by the window, and grid-like wooden racks had been set up on the walls to the left and right. All the furniture was a relaxed, dark-brown natural wood, a thick beige carpet was laid out on the floor, and there was even a large sofa set to the immediate left of the doorway, making it hard to believe that this was a room in a junior high school. The space was conceivably more luxurious than the principal’s office (which he had peeked into just once before).

  Utai stood by the edge of the conference table in front of him, and Kuroyukihime was on one side of the sofa set. There was no one else in the room. Apparently, Kuroyukihime had been working overtime by herself, but what he hadn’t been expecting was her outfit.

  “K-Kuroyukihime, why are you wearing that?” Haruyuki asked, instantly forgetting his questions about her relationship with Utai.

  Kuroyukihime briskly brought her arms up to hide the formfitting black T-shirt and the navy shorts—her gym clothes. She pursed her lips, cheeks reddening slightly. “N-no, this is, er,” she said somewhat shrilly. “I simply thought I should be dressed to get dirty if I was going to clean that hutch. Anyway, more important, what are you doing here, Haruyuki?”

  “Me? Oh…umm…Why am I here again?” Haruyuki mumbled, honestly not knowing for a moment, and Utai’s words marched across the chat window, exasperated somehow.

  UI> ARITA IS THE PRESIDENT OF THE ANIMAL CARE CLUB. HE CLEANED OUT THE HUTCH FOR ME. WHEN I SAID THAT I WAS COMING TO THE STUDENT COUNCIL OFFICE TO SAY HELLO, HE CAME WITH ME, BUT I DON’T KNOW WHY.

  Seriously, what was it…

  At almost the same time he sank into belated thought, he heard Kuroyukihime sounding equally surprised and exasperated. “Y-you’re the club president?! How did…Oh, I see, the result of a lotto, then? Honestly, at such a difficult time, you do get pulled along with the currents, Haruyuki.”

  If he said here that he’d volunteered through a misunderstanding, the whole situation would probably get more complicated, so he simply flashed an embarrassed smile. “No, it’s not that bad.”

  Shifting his gaze, he was overwhelmed by the charm of Kuroyukihime in her gym clothes, a different appeal than her usual tidy, uniformed self. Maybe because she had her hair pulled back in a ponytail like Utai, the way she looked made him feel a bursting energy.

  He stared vacantly until he stumbled upon the obvious question. “A-anyway, why were you going to clean the hutch out? You can’t be on both the student council and in the Animal Care Club…can you?”

  “Oh, that. Well…” Kuroyukihime cut herself off as if having realized something and briskly moved her fingers over her virtual desktop. In Haruyuki’s field of view, a message scrolled by to the effect that he had been given permission to stay past school closing. Looking at his clock, he saw it was only seven seconds before six. He started to thank her, but she brushed his words away with a wave of her hand and continued.

  “I assumed that just three people—all of whom would no doubt be decided by lottery—would be unable to clean that hutch in a short time. I promised Utai to make the hutch usable as soon as possible, you see. And I thought I would help clean until they kicked us out. I never dreamed you would be in the Animal Care Club, or that you’d be able to clean up that mess in a mere two hours. You did well, Haruyuki.”

  She nodded deeply at him with a gentle smile, and an invisible hand squeezed his heart tightly. He simply stood there and stared into her eyes, not knowing how to respond.

  The truth is, I was gonna skip out. But then I thought about how you were probably working hard at your own stuff, which gave me the strength to work hard, too. And yet you…Once your own work was finished, you were planning to go over and clean out that hutch…

  He didn’t know how far this inner voice of his reached, but Kuroyukihime nodded slowly once more.

  Interrupting this magical moment was the cherry-colored font scrolling across the chat window at super-high speed. UI> I APOLOGIZE FOR BOTHERING YOU WHEN YOU’RE STARING AT EACH OTHER, BUT I WOULD APPRECIATE IT IF YOU COULD TELL ME ALREADY. ARE YOU AND ARITA FRIENDS, SACCHI?

  Blinking rapidly, Kuroyukihime looked at Utai to the right of Haruyuki. “Oh, right,” she said. “No, I’m sorry. That’s right, you don’t know, do you, Uiui? My mistake.”

  Sacchi? Uiui? Dumfounded, Haruyuki looked back and forth between the two girls as he listened to Kuroyukihime’s concise explanation.

  “He—Haruyuki Arita—is the vanguard of my Legion, my ‘child,’ Uiui.”

  “Hng…?! Unh?!!”

  Wh-wh-what are you sayiiiiiing?! Haruyuki shrieked in his heart.

  Utai’s clear response flowed before his eyes. UI> OH, IS THAT HOW YOU KNOW EACH OTHER? IS ARITA THAT SILVER CROW?

  “???!!!??!!?!?!”

  I-I’ve been outed in the real before my own eyyyyyyes!

  Reflexively, he started to flee, but the door was locked, and no matter how he pulled and it clattered, it wouldn’t open.

  “Look, Haruyuki,” Kuroyukihime called to his back, utterly stunned. “I think you should be able to figure out just how this all came about. It’s obvious she—Utai Shinomiya—is a Burst Linker like us, and that she was a member of the first Nega Nebulus, all right?”

  5

  I don’t trust anyone anymore, Haruyuki muttered to himself bleakly, like the dark hero in an old manga might say while lowering the gun in his right hand and pressing on a wound with his left.

  He crouched in one corner of the sofa in the student council office, a cup of black tea in both hands. Made for him by Kuroyukihime herself, it was Darjeeling, which somehow seemed luxurious, but he still hadn’t recovered from the shock enough to be able to enjoy the sweet fragrance.

  Okay, saying I don’t trust anyone is maybe too much, but at the very least, I’m suspicious. All the people who show up suddenly and are ridiculously relaxed and treat me like a human being are without exception Burst Linkers. And high-level old-timers. I’m not wrong here.

  He glanced at the sofa across from him; Utai Shinomiya was just pouring milk into her cup, a serious look on her face. She nodded as if she had poured in just the right amount, put the pitcher back, and stirred solemnly with a spoon.

  Watching this childish gesture, he realized this was still hard for him to understand. Utai was in fourth grade at Matsunogi Academy, a school in the same corporate group as Umesato; she was born in September 2037; and so, she was currently just nine years and nine months old. Two years younger than the Red King Niko. The first Nega Nebulus vanished two and a half years earlier after the show of insurrection by its leader, Black Lotus, which meant Utai would actually have only been seven at the time. So then at what age exactly had she become a Burst Linker?

  Too many questions gnawing at him, Haruyuki sipped his tea, while Kuroyukihime, seated to his left, placed her cup back in its saucer and started the conversation in a rather unexpected way.
>
  “You weren’t wearing a Neurolinker yesterday, either. Do you usually leave it off, Utai?”

  The smaller girl began typing adroitly with just her left hand while sipping her milk tea with her right. There was no noticeable decrease in her incredible typing speed. UI> YES. WHEN I HAVE IT ON, I ALWAYS END UP WANTING TO GO TO THAT WORLD.

  “Well, why don’t you? Unlike me, there’s no bounty on your head. There won’t be a parade of annoying players assaulting you if your name shows up in the matching list.”

  UI> ABOUT ONCE OR TWICE A MONTH, I DO SOLO DUELS IN THE NEUTRAL AREA OF SETAGAYA. THAT’S ENOUGH. I’M NOT ALLOWED TO WISH FOR ANYTHING MORE. A SUBSTANTIAL PORTION OF THE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE DESTRUCTION OF THE OLD NEGA NEBULUS LIES WITH ME, AFTER ALL.

  “Huh?!” It was Haruyuki letting out the stunned cry.

  He intently examined the chat window floating before his eyes, but no matter how many times he read the words there, he couldn’t pull any other meaning from the row of text Utai had typed.

  Destruction of Nega Nebulus.

  Kuroyukihime had said those same words countless times up to that point.

  At a meeting of the Seven Kings two and a half years earlier, the Black Lotus had taken the head of fellow level-niner Red Rider, the Red King, and an advocate of peace, and was now to be forever pursued. As a result, the first Nega Nebulus she had ruled over had fallen into ruin. Haruyuki understood that much at least. But…

  He shifted his gaze to one side, seeking an explanation, but Kuroyukihime, sitting there in her gym clothes, left her teacup there on the table. Her eyes were colored with sadness, and she didn’t open her mouth. Utai remained quiet as well, left hand on her holokeyboard.

  In the heavy silence, the light coming through the window on the north side gradually faded. Although it would be summer solstice soon, the sky was indeed still dim when 6:30 PM rolled around.

  Haruyuki bit his lip. He was pretty sure the limit for the student council members was seven. And he was worried about the time, but he was far more interested in where this exchange between the two girls had started and where it was going. He wanted so badly to have everything explained in a clear and easy-to-understand manner, but he was essentially an uninvited guest. He hesitated at being too forward.

  Fortunately, however, the two veteran Burst Linkers seemed to have reached the seed of an agreement during the period of silence.

  Kuroyukihime sighed lightly. “Up to now, I’ve consciously—or unconsciously—avoided talking about the first Nega Nebulus. I thought if I was clinging to something I’d lost, I wouldn’t be able to face you and the others, Haruyuki. And you all are working so hard for me as the new Nega Nebulus. And more than that, I didn’t have the courage to face my own crimes. But Raker’s come back, and here we are, meeting again, after two and a half years. The time has come to face the past…I suppose.”

  Haruyuki held his breath and drank in her words, while across from him, Utai’s fingers flashed.

  UI> IF WE’RE GOING TO CALL THEM CRIMES, THEN THEY ARE MINE AS WELL. YOU, ME, FU…WE’VE EACH TURNED OUR EYES AWAY FROM OUR RESPECTIVE PASTS AND HIDDEN OURSELVES AWAY IN DIFFERENT CORNERS OF THE ACCELERATED WORLD FOR A LONG TIME. BUT I’M CERTAIN THAT THE REASON WE’RE NOW ABLE TO ONCE AGAIN FACE OURSELVES IS BECAUSE OF HOW HARD THE MEMBERS OF THE NEW NEGA NEBULUS HAVE BEEN WORKING. ARITA HAS THE RIGHT TO KNOW WHAT ERRORS WE COMMITTED PREVIOUSLY AND WHY WE HAD TO REMOVE OURSELVES FROM THE FRONT LINE.

  “Mmm. You’re right. That’s exactly right.” Kuroyukihime nodded after reading the cherry-colored text and turned her entire body toward Haruyuki.

  In the depths of her obsidian eyes was the same shaky light he’d seen the many times she started to talk about her own past before, but this time, it wasn’t only that. In the very center of her iris, a small star glittered resolutely.

  “Haruyuki.” After a tiny pause, she spoke again, her voice edged with a crispness that told of how she’d endured the pain and tried to overcome it. “Just as you know, I pretended to accept the cease-fire agreement the first Red King, Red Rider, insisted upon and took off his head. I then fell into battle with the other five kings. I survived, burst out, and then blocked my connection to the global net for two years. To be more precise, however, just once, the day after the battle with the kings, I dove into the Unlimited Neutral Field. To apologize to the members of the first Nega Nebulus and transfer the majority of the burst points I had accumulated to them.”

  UI> THERE WAS NO WAY WE COULD ACCEPT THAT, Utai interjected in text, and Kuroyukihime grinned slightly.

  “But I had nothing else to offer. You all got so mad at me, despite the fact that I risked my life to exchange my points for items in the shop.”

  UI> OF COURSE WE DID. EVEN REMEMBERING IT NOW, I GET A LITTLE ANNOYED.

  “I was wrong.” Kuroyukihime shrugged and smiled once more. “But the story doesn’t end there. I confessed what I had done, appointed the next Legion head, and announced my intention to retire from the Accelerated World, but Utai and the other Elements came back with an unexpected proposal.”

  “E-elements?” Haruyuki parroted.

  UI> AT SOME POINT, THE FOUR BURST LINKERS POSITIONED AS THE SUBLEADERS OF NEGA NEBULUS AT THE TIME WERE GIVEN THIS RATHER GRAND NICKNAME. THE REASON WAS THAT THE AVATAR ATTRIBUTES WERE DIVIDED INTO EARTH, WATER, FIRE, AND WIND. As Utai typed, her cheeks reddened slightly.

  “Wind was naturally Sky Raker. I’ll leave you to look forward to finding out what Uiui’s attribute is later,” Kuroyukihime added, grinning, and Haruyuki glanced back and forth between her and the faintly sour-faced Utai.

  Four subleaders taking the separate name of Elements. He could probably take that to mean they had been like the Four Heavenly Kings, the Buddhist gods the daimyo lords had served long ago in the Warring States period. He had expected this to a certain extent; this small girl was powerful, so powerful that she had stood alongside the Sky Raker in the past. If she was so strong and living in Suginami as they did, why hadn’t Kuroyukihime gotten in touch with her sooner and asked her to come back to the Legion? There were probably some issues he didn’t know about, but defending would be a whole lot easier if they could at least get her to help during the Territories.

  Haruyuki’s thoughts ended up stuck on a rather narrow-minded track. But the look on Kuroyukihime’s face changed as she cleared her throat, so he hurried to sit up straighter. Her quiet voice rolled out into the student council office as it sank into darkness.

  “The counterproposal from the Elements to my retirement announcement was completely unexpected. They…they said that perhaps there was another way to beat Brain Burst. Something other than reaching level ten.”

  “What?!” Haruyuki was stunned.

  The end point of the online fighting game Brain Burst. Given the severity of the conditions imposed on all players, he had unwaveringly believed there was no other way there than to reach level ten. But was it possible there existed an equally difficult objective? For instance, unifying all the Territories or something? No, that was just too unrealistic. The majority of Burst Linkers were concentrated in Tokyo, but the areas themselves were spread out all over Japan.

  “Wh-what is it?!” Haruyuki asked impatiently, leaning forward, unable to expand his hypothesis beyond this. “The other way to clear the game?!”

  “You should have seen it at least once, Haruyuki.” Kuroyukihime switched gears, adopting a mysterious tone.

  Haruyuki opened his eyes wide. “Seen…seen what?”

  “A magical castle existing in the center of the Accelerated World, granting access to absolutely none…a severe and majestic figure.”

  Instantly…

  The sight from only the day before popped up vividly in his mind: the Demon City stage, heavy with thick fog. The group of towers soaring darkly to pierce the clouds on the far side of the city buildings cutting into the sky. The dazzling and dignified silhouette, refusing all comers and yet somehow inviting.

  “…The Imperial
Palace?” Haruyuki whispered in a shaky voice, and Kuroyukihime and Utai both nodded gently, saying nothing. He blinked frantically several times before hurriedly arguing, “B-but…you said so yourself yesterday, Kuroyukihime! You said no matter what we do, it’s the only place in the Accelerated World we can’t go!”

  “But I believe I also said this: We only know for sure that entry’s not possible in the Normal Duel Field.”

  “Th-that’s…So then, umm…somewhere that’s not the Normal Duel Field.” He gulped loudly before continuing timidly, “That means there’s a way in if you’re in the higher-level Unlimited Neutral Field?”

  For a few seconds, he got no response. Kuroyukihime and Utai exchanged glances, and then both lowered their eyelashes for some reason. However, they soon lifted their faces and nodded like they had earlier.

  This time, Utai replied via the chat tool. UI> AT THE VERY LEAST, SOMETHING THAT COULD BE A PATH HAS BEEN CONFIRMED. AT THE IMPERIAL PALACE IN THE UNLIMITED NEUTRAL F IELD—WE CALL IT THE C ASTLE—THERE ARE FOUR GATES THAT THE IMPERIAL PALACE IN THE GENERAL FIELD IN THE CHIYODA AREA DOES NOT HAVE.

  “…Are they…the entrance to the Castle?”

  “Mmm. Four massive gates rise up, one on the east, west, north, and south of the castle, probably about thirty meters tall. All the other castle walls are indeed set with invisible walls above and below the actual walls.”

  Haruyuki drew the ground plan for the real-world Imperial Palace in his mind. He was pretty sure there were also gates in the four cardinal directions on the real thing on this side. Some had even been used as metro station names. The one on the south was Sakuradamon; the west was Hanzomon. He couldn’t remember the names for the north or east, but since the terrain of the Accelerated World was in principle based on the real world, it was natural to think that these would be the gates on the Castle, too.

  “Are these gates…open?” he asked, secretly a little excited.