Kuroyukihime’s Return

by Reki Kawahara

  Strange. The table was wood, and the top was shot through with a fine wood grain. But the underside was smooth like plastic, without the slightest hint of texture.

  “What is this…It’s like it’s a polygon…?”

  Kuroyukihime nodded casually at Haruyuki as he brought his face back up. “Exactly. This blue world is a 3-D image reconstructed from images captured by several social cameras in the lounge, and our brains are seeing it through our Neurolinkers. Areas that are blind spots for the cameras are supplemented by estimates. Which is why there is no point in trying to look up the skirt of that girl there.”

  “Social cameras” were officially “social security surveillance cameras,” and the whole of Japan was covered with them, the goal the maintenance of public order. Guarded by the secure protective wall of the government’s image monitoring network, there was no way at all for the general population to sneak a look through them—or that was how it was supposed to be.

  As this tidbit popped into his head, Haruyuki’s eyes reflexively followed the legs of the female student council member as they stretched out under the table, confirming that the graceful lines disappeared at the edge of her skirt.

  Kuroyukihime glanced over at Haruyuki hurrying to stand up. “Don’t look at my legs. They’re in the view of the cameras.”

  “I—I won’t.” Working hard to fix his gaze in one place, Haruyuki shook his head. “A-anyway, I basically get the logic of what we’re seeing. It’s a 3-D movie of the real world in real time…Using our avatars as proxies, we’re looking at stuff around us and talking via the direct connection, right?”

  “Right. Your school local net avatar is being used here as a stopgap.”

  “I’d rather have something else,” he mumbled, sighing heavily. He shook the pig head, got his thoughts sorted, and looked at Kuroyukihime’s avatar once again. “But…that’s only the start of it. What I really want to know…What exactly is accelerated? I’ve never heard of Neurolinkers equipped with a function that stops time like this!”

  “Of course you haven’t. Only people with the Brain Burst program can call up the acceleration function hidden in the Neurolinkers,” Kuroyukihime said, almost under her breath, raising her left hand and gently nudging the extra-large Neurolinker wrapped around the neck of the frozen real Haruyuki. “Do you know the principle behind the operation of the Neurolinker, Haruyuki?”

  Haruyuki nodded as he watched her touch “her” neck with a slim finger, giving him a start for some reason. “Y-yes…I don’t know all the details, but I know it connects wirelessly with your brain cells at the quantum level to send in images, sound, and sensations while simultaneously canceling out the reality of your own senses.”

  “Right. In other words, the principle behind it is fundamentally different from the headgear-style virtual reality machines of the twenty-twenties or the implants of the thirties. A quantum connection is not a physiological mechanism. Thus, you don’t have the burden on the brain cells, and you get this unexpected excess…or so a certain person out there realized.”

  “What do you mean…excess?”

  Kuroyukihime responded with another question, as if Haruyuki’s query was slightly off the mark. “Have you ever touched a computer from the twenties?”

  “Y-yeah, sure. We have one at my house.”

  “Then you probably know what they called the basic operating frequency of the computers.”

  “The…base clock?”

  Kuroyukihime nodded with satisfaction. “Yes. Depending on the set scale, you overclocked the signal, which carved up time like a pendulum on the motherboard, to run the CPU. And human brains, our consciousness works the same way.”

  “What?!” Haruyuki’s eyes widened, breath shooting out of his large pig’s nose. “N-no way! Where is this pendulum inside us, then?”

  “Here,” Kuroyukihime replied immediately. Embracing the real, blue Haruyuki from the front, she poked the center of his back with her right hand, eyes upturned as if playing a joke.

  “Wh-what are you doing?”

  “Right now, your clock is a little faster. You probably get it already. It’s your heart! Your heart’s not merely a pump to send out blood. The beating of your heart makes it a basic clock generator determining the driving speed of your thoughts.”

  Swallowing hard, Haruyuki pressed on the chest of his pig body. Kuroyukihime continued, still touching the area above his heart, almost as if she was teasing him.

  “For instance, when you try to stop your body, your heartbeat will speed up depending on the situation. Like a race-car driver’s. Why? It’s because you need to accelerate your thoughts—your awareness of the situation, your judgment. Or like a pair of lovers touching each other. You accelerate to more deeply experience each minute, each second.”

  Kuroyukihime slowly dragged the tip of the finger on Haruyuki’s chest upward, stopping at his neck. “With each beat of your heart, the quantum pulse signal generated is sent back to your central nervous system, driving your brain—that is, your thoughts. So what do you think happens when the Neurolinker around your neck captures that signal and overclocks you?”

  Haruyuki felt a shudder run up his back. “Your thoughts…are accelerated?”

  “Exactly. And the Neurolinker lets you do that. Without any kind of negative impact on your body or your brain cells. Right now, in this exact moment, our Neurolinkers are overclocking the signal generated by a single heartbeat, riding the wireless quantum signal and sending information to our brains. In fact, it’s doing so at a rate of more than a thousand times the norm!”

  “A thousand…times…” Haruyuki could no longer do anything other than repeat the words fed to him, dumbfounded. In his almost drugged awareness, Kuroyukihime’s smooth voice made even more of an impact.

  “Your thoughts are accelerated a thousandfold. Which means one second of reality is a thousand seconds. Do the math and you’re experiencing sixteen minutes and forty seconds.”

  This was more than F1 racers. This was basically more magic to stop time than it was technology.

  However, before Haruyuki could start to wonder what specifically would be possible if he were to make full use of this marvelous phenomenon, Kuroyukihime muttered, “Oh!” as if just realizing something.

  “…?”

  “No, sorry. I got caught up in explaining things, and I ended up using a bit too much time. I completely forgot that the real you is about to be sent flying.”

  “Hah…” Haruyuki hurried to his feet and went around to the other side of his frozen blue self.

  Araya’s punch had definitely moved quite a bit during the five minutes or so (or the point-three seconds) they had spent talking. It was now only less than fifty centimeters from the real Haruyuki’s round cheeks.

  Araya’s face was reproduced so perfectly, lips twisting to expose his brutal excitement, that it was hard to believe it was created using images from the social cameras hidden in the ceiling.

  What exactly about this is fun? No, it’s probably fun. I mean, me standing there aimlessly in front of his fist with that blank look on my face. I’m basically a bit player in his story.

  Haruyuki turned back to Kuroyukihime, depressing thoughts rolling around in his brain. “So…how long does this acceleration last?”

  “In theory, forever. But due to the limits of the Brain Burst program, the longest you can stay accelerated is thirty felt minutes, or one-point-eight real seconds.”

  At Kuroyukihime’s cool response, Haruyuki widened his round, pink pig eyes. If his real-world self had been frozen like this for nearly two seconds, then Araya’s punch would travel the remaining distance and smash in the bridge of his nose in no time.

  “H-he’s going to hit me, isn’t he?” Haruyuki cried, imagining himself being sent flying frame by frame.

  But Kuroyukihime laughed lightly and added by way of explanation, “Ha-ha! Don’t worry. Of course, you can stop the accelerated state when you want to.”

  “O-oh…y
ou can? Then I better go back to reality and avoid this punch…”

  “Simple. Ha-ha, this way of using acceleration is the easiest to understand. You carefully watch the situation with a reaction speed not possible in flesh and blood, and after careful deliberation, you release the acceleration and leisurely take action.”

  Just as she noted, accelerated, he now understood what needed to be done given the trajectory and aim of Araya’s punch, which due to his terror he hadn’t even been able to analyze—much less avoid—the many times he had been hit before now.

  Once he released the acceleration, it would be enough to move about fifteen centimeters to the left. Swallowing hard, he carved the thought into his head and looked at Kuroyukihime for the command to release the acceleration.

  But before he could speak, the beautiful girl in black dropped a bomb in a light tone. “But don’t avoid it. He’s actually daring to hit you here, Haruyuki.”

  “Wh—” Haruyuki’s pig nose twitched before he shouted, “I—I don’t want to! It’s going to hurt!”

  “Hurt what?”

  “Huh…? What do you mean ‘what’?”

  “I’m asking you whether it’s going to hurt your body or your mind.”

  The smile disappeared from Kuroyukihime’s avatar. Without waiting for Haruyuki’s response, she put a black high heel forward sharply.

  Her slim form, nearly half a meter taller than Haruyuki’s pig body, crouched down, and Kuroyukihime stared into his eyes well within his personal space. He swallowed and stood bolt upright.

  “This isn’t the first time you have been punched by this student, Araya.”

  “N-no.” For some reason, Haruyuki nodded even though he had so desperately wanted her not to find out about the bullying.

  “So then there are two reasons why he has not been dealt with before now. One is, of course, that you have just meekly accepted his behavior. And the other is that Araya has cleverly set the scene of his violence and extortion beyond the view of the social cameras.”

  It was true that any direct bullying that happened to Haruyuki was always in places where students didn’t go, like the shadow of the ventilation units on the roof or behind the school. So that was to avoid not the eyes of other people but the cameras?

  The expression on Kuroyukihime’s face was complicated, and she stretched herself upright smoothly. “Unfortunately, while they are few, there are students like him even among the eighth and ninth graders. They have their own sort of network, and apparently, an illegal app that warns them when they are in view of the social cameras is quite popular with their crowd. That lot would never give themselves away in front of the cameras. Even as a new student, he would surely have had that drilled into him.”

  Glancing at Araya’s dyed blue face with eyes like ice, Kuroyukihime continued in a quiet, strong voice. “But he is still a child, after all. At my earlier provocation, he forgot himself and is lashing out violently here in front of all these cameras. Understand? This is your chance, Haruyuki. It would be easy to dodge this punch, but if you do, Araya will come to his senses and run off. Your opportunity to punish him as he deserves will again recede ever further from view.”

  And then Araya would inflict further pain on Haruyuki. He could only too easily imagine that Araya’s revenge would make everything up to now look like a game. A shudder ran down his spine as Haruyuki looked at his real self and Araya’s fist approaching that face.

  The thug’s bony right hand tapered to rough points, and if it hit him, it would hurt enough to make him cry. It was a pain he had become disgustingly familiar with over these last six months. But—

  What had really been bleeding was not his body but his heart. His pride, which had been steadily shredded.

  “Um.” Haltingly, Haruyuki asked Kuroyukihime, “If I managed to master Brain Burst, would I be able to beat him in a fight?”

  All expression disappeared from her beautiful face, and she stared directly at Haruyuki. “You probably could. You’re already a Burst Linker, which means you have a power greatly exceeding that of the unaccelerated. If you were so inclined, you wouldn’t have to settle for just one punch; you could beat him for as long as you wanted.”

  I am so inclined. Is there some reason I wouldn’t be?

  I’ll neatly dodge Araya’s karate and make him into something even uglier than a pig. I’ll smash his nose, knock out all his front teeth, pull out every single one of those precious golden hairs from his head when he’s bowed down before me, weeping.

  Clenching his teeth with a crunch, he sighed heavily and told Kuroyukihime in a shaking voice. “…No, I won’t do it. I’ll get hit like a good boy. I won’t get the chance again, after all.”

  “Mm.” Smiling with satisfaction somehow, Kuroyukihime nodded slowly. “A wise choice. Now, let’s try to minimize the damage while maximizing the effect, hmm? Once the acceleration runs out, you leap back to the right with everything you’ve got. Don’t forget to turn your head to the right as his fist hits you.”

  “O-okay.” Moving directly behind his real self, Haruyuki checked the trajectory of Araya’s punch. She was right, if he leapt while turning his face, he could mitigate most of the bite from Araya’s karate technique.

  Nodding, he looked to see exactly what he’d be leaping into. There was a table to the left, but a large space opened up behind him to the right, with no obstacles before the big window looking out onto the courtyard. Except for one person.

  “Oh no…I can’t. If I jump from here to there, I’ll end up slamming into you.”

  There was only about a meter between Haruyuki standing and the real Kuroyukihime sitting on the chair. If he hit her slim form with his enormous bulk, he couldn’t be sure what would happen to her.

  However, the avatar in the black dress merely shrugged lightly. “It’s not a problem; this way is more effective. Don’t worry, I’ll make sure to dodge. I won’t get hurt.”

  “…O-okay.” It was certainly possible to do if you knew in advance what was going to happen. He was forced to nod.

  “We’re very nearly out of time here. Hurry and line up with your real self.”

  She poked his back and Haruyuki took a step forward to align his pig avatar with his blue self. Kuroyukihime seemed to have sat on the chair behind him; the position of her voice was lower.

  “All right. Now I’m going to teach you the command to release the acceleration. Be strong. ‘Burst out’!”

  “Burst out!”

  Haruyuki took a deep breath and put everything he had behind the shout.

  A jetlike roar approached from a distance, shattering the surrounding silence. The blue world gradually took on its former color. In the left of his field of vision, Araya’s static fist began to move, bit by tiny bit. From a sluggish snail’s pace, it gradually sped up and drew nearer to Haruyuki’s cheek.

  As he prepared to leap back to the right as instructed, pushing off with both legs, he twisted his head earnestly to the right. The punch chugging toward him touched his skin, sinking in slightly.

  And then the world returned.

  As the noise around him rushed in, Haruyuki felt the fist digging into his left cheek. He felt his teeth driven into the inside of his cheek, his lip splitting. It was probably bleeding a little, but the pain was definitely about half that of the other karate punches he had suffered through however many times before this.

  At the same time, his large body flew spectacularly through the air action-movie style. Fervently hoping she would manage to jump clear of him, Haruyuki collided with the chair behind him. For a brief moment, he smelled something good, felt her soft hair.

  The chair clattering to the floor was followed immediately by an ominous thud.

  His back slamming into the floor, Haruyuki stopped breathing momentarily. Even as he gasped for air, he was yanking his head around to check on Kuroyukihime. She was supposed to have dodged, but what his widening eyes saw was her slender figure, limbs splayed out like a broken doll, eyes close
d, head up against the lounge window.

  Below the disheveled bangs, a single trail of blood ran down a cheek so white it was nearly translucent.

  “Ah…ah!” Swallowing a scream, Haruyuki tried to stand up. But at that moment—

  “Don’t move!!”

  Kuroyukihime’s think voice hit his brain through his still directly connected Linker. Freezing instinctively faceup on the floor, Haruyuki responded. “B-but you’re bleeding!!”

  “Don’t worry. It’s just a little cut. I told you, aim to maximize the effect. After this, you’ll never have to deal with Araya again.”

  Staying still as instructed, Haruyuki moved just his eyes from left to right.

  Araya, right fist still stuck out in front of him, looked down at Haruyuki and Kuroyukihime, mouth agape. The blood slowly drained from his face, and his thin lips trembled a few times, as if spasming.

  The total silence that descended on the lounge was shattered by the terrible screams of the girls at the surrounding tables.

  “Aaaaaaah!!”

  Araya and subordinates AB put up almost no resistance when they were thrown out by the male council members. The three of them, white as ghosts, knees knocking, were half dragged away by the teachers who had come running, faces red with anger, and Kuroyukihime was taken straight to the hospital, held by another female council member.

  Haruyuki himself just got a little bandaging in the health room, and as the school doctor’s hand disinfected and patched him up, the words Kuroyukihime had uttered immediately before the direct cable was pulled reverberated in his ears.

  “Oops, I forgot to tell you. Do not take off your Neurolinker before you come to school tomorrow. And you can’t make a global connection, not even for a second. Got it? Under no circumstances. Promise.”

  He couldn’t even begin to guess at the intent behind these instructions. The entire two hours he spent in the health room, his whole body was enveloped in a strange feeling of detachment. He had no idea how he was supposed to process and digest all of the things that had happened to him in just these past two days.