Signal Fire at the Water’s Edge

by Reki Kawahara

  When he lifted his head, a younger girl was leaning lightly against the door of the hutch, holding a deck brush in her right hand and smiling. On the chest of her white gym uniform, which she was wearing since it didn’t matter if it got wet, was a school crest that was not Umesato’s.

  “Wh-which what?” Haruyuki stopped moving his hands and asked in reply, and Shinomiya Utai, at once a fourth grader at the affiliated Matsunogi Academy and the “super president” of the Umesato Animal Care Club, looked up at him as she sent the fingers of her left hand racing through space.

  UI> ARITA, THE LOOK ON YOUR FACE IS CURRENTLY SOMEHOW HALF-HAPPY AND HALF-SAD…

  The lines of text were displayed in the chat window at a speed faster than they could be said aloud.

  Haruyuki thought about it for a second and then bobbed his head. “Yeah, maybe…I went to Nakano after we were done taking care of Hoo yesterday, but I didn’t get to duel Cerberus. That’s the reason for the sad—well, regretful face, I guess.”

  UI> IS THAT WHAT HAPPENED…?

  The smile vanished from her face, so Haruyuki hurried to add, “But I mean, if he’s in junior high, then he has to have a bunch of stuff happening in the real. Once it’s July, semester finals start and all…” He paused, damage inflicted on himself with those words.

  Utai smiled broadly once again. UI> I’M SURE YOU’LL GET TO SEE HIM SOON. SO THEN WHAT’S THE REASON FOR THE HAPPY FACE?

  “That…,” he started to say, and then he clamped his mouth shut.

  They were going to report the series of events that happened after school two days earlier—Cerberus and the sudden Battle Royale, the intrusion of Argon Array, and the reason for the happy face: the appearance and return to the Legion of Aqua Current—to all the members before the Territories that day. Even Fuko, who’d stayed at the Aritas’ the previous night, still didn’t know.

  “…Um, that’s a secret for a little longer.”

  Utai opened her eyes wide and then puffed out her cheeks defiantly. UI> EVEN FOR ME, THE SUPER PRESIDENT OF THE ANIMAL CARE CLUB?

  “Th-that’s just a title I-Izeki went and gave you.” The instant he said this, a buzzer sounding in his brain notified him of his incorrect response.

  UI> SACCHI REVISED—I MEAN, CORRECTED—THE CLUB REGISTER AND CHANGED MY ROLE TO “SCHOOL CULTURAL EXCHANGE STUDENT” AND “SUPER PRESIDENT.” SO IT’S AN OFFICIAL JOB NOW!

  “Wh-what?!” She’s gone and done something serious for fun again.

  With this thought, he opened the Animal Care Club page on the local net, and indeed, above President Haruyuki, the name of Super President Utai Shinomiya shone brilliantly. Glancing at Utai out of the corner of his eye as she thrust out the chest of her gym uniform proudly, he thought about it for a while before calling out to the snow-faced owl on the perch, “Hey, Hoo! You have something you can’t even say to your boss, right?”

  The bird of prey that reigned from the pinnacle of the Umesato Animal Care Club spread his wings in a fairly indifferent manner and flapped them two or three times. Interpreting that as an assent, Haruyuki turned back to Utai.

  “See? Hoo’s saying that, too.”

  UI> IT’S NOT FAIR TO USE HOO! After puffing up her cheeks 50 percent more than before, Utai broke into a soundless grin. Brandishing the brush in her right hand, she continued to type deftly with just her left hand. UI> NOW THEN, I’LL HAVE YOU EXPLAIN AFTER THE CLEANING IS FINISHED. SO LET’S FINISH THIS!

  Once they had brushed and mopped the floor, cleaned the water bath, and spread out the sheets again, the clock had swung around to three thirty. Reina Izeki, who had given Utai the title of Super President, was absent from club work that day, since apparently, the situation was dire for the exhibit of class B. Even still, he should count himself lucky she came to apologize first; the other member of the club, a boy from class A called Hamajima, hadn’t shown his face once since the first day.

  Thus, it was just the two of them who signed the club activities log and uploaded the file, completing the work for that day.

  UI> I’M GOING TO GO AND CHANGE MY CLOTHES, SO PLEASE WAIT A MOMENT. Utai bowed neatly, bag in one hand. He felt bad that she was always having to use the washrooms on the first floor of the second school building as a changing room, but the only proper girls’ locker rooms were in the gym and the first school building, and both were pretty far from the rear courtyard.

  “T-take your time.” After seeing Utai off, Haruyuki sat down on a bench under a tree and let out a sigh.

  As of that day, it’d already been twenty days since he’d been appointed to the Animal Care Club. He had gotten used to cleaning the hutch and weighing the bird, and although he still couldn’t feed Hoo himself yet, the club work had very much become part of his daily routine.

  When he’d first seen the hutch, piled high with who knew how many years of rotten leaves, he was convinced there was no way to clean it up, and when he’d seen Hoo, he thought it a complete impossibility to take care of a large bird like that. And to begin with, Haruyuki had never harbored any intention of doing any kind of extracurricular activity; the sequence of events that led to him being selected as a club member had started with him unintentionally standing as a candidate through his own carelessness.

  At school, he desperately held his breath, pulled into himself, and tried not to stand out, not to be noticed. That was supposedly his lone, absolute rule. Even after he met Kuroyukihime and she gave him the miraculous thought-acceleration program Brain Burst, he had assumed his self in the real world wouldn’t change a bit—that it couldn’t.

  But in truth, it wasn’t as though something had changed. He was still as afraid as ever of the eyes of students he didn’t know very well, and just being called on in class was enough to make sweat pop up on his forehead. Even with the Animal Care Club, he couldn’t deny that he was able to continue with it solely because the only other active member was another Burst Linker and fellow Legion member, Utai.

  Yet, a few days earlier…when he had overexerted himself in the mock basketball tournament and collapsed, he’d been taken to the nurses’ office. There, Kuroyukihime had stayed with him, going so far as to ditch her own class, and had said that in both the real world and in the Accelerated World, it was possible to overwrite a wall that appeared to be an absolute limit by drawing on the power of the image.

  For Haruyuki, if he really dived deep, the “absolute limit” was his own self: small, fat, not good at sports or school, without the courage to fight back against the delinquents who bullied him. That negative self-image had locked him up in a small cage. Or that’s what Kuroyukihime would probably say.

  But even if he had wanted to have a positive image of his real self, he couldn’t find any basis for it. So he had worked a little at cleaning the hutch or in a basketball game—that was something any other student could have done. That was nothing more than negative 100 becoming negative 95.

  Ever since he had become a Burst Linker last fall, Haruyuki had had many encounters not only in the Accelerated World but in the real world as well. Super President Utai Shinomiya/Ardor Maiden was one of them, and then there were Fuko Kurasaki/Sky Raker, Rin Kusakabe/Ash Roller, Akira Himi/Aqua Current, and of course, Kuroyukihime/Black Lotus. They had held his hand, cheered him on, given him the push he needed not just for his duel avatar, but for the real-life Haruyuki, too. They had told him over and over and over that his existence had a unique value all on its own.

  He hadn’t the slightest intention of doubting those words. He was going to fight with everything he had from now on, too, in order to live up to everyone’s expectations.

  —But.

  What if I stop being the Burst Linker Silver Crow? What if I lost all my memories of the Accelerated World, and I went back to being the original Haruyuki Arita with nothing?

  If that happened, it’d be like them that time. Like them arguing in hushed, sharp voices, not knowing I was listening in the living room in the middle of the night with the lights turned off. Lik
e Mom and Dad saying they don’t want me…

  Abruptly, he heard the flapping of wings, and Haruyuki lifted his face. On the other side of the chicken wire, Hoo had spread his grayish-white wings all the way out and was staring at Haruyuki with round, copper-colored eyes.

  With a body length of twenty centimeters, he was one of the smaller owl species, but when he spread his wings, he created quite the impressive silhouette. The shape of his wings was utterly unlike that of the crows and starlings often seen around town. His legs, built for capturing prey, were also solid. Haruyuki was once again reminded that this was a bird of prey, regardless of his small stature.

  But on one of those legs was a horrible scar in the shape of a lightning bolt. It was the mark left from when his previous owner had abandoned Hoo, digging out the individual identification microchip there in order to escape punishment under the Reformed Animal Welfare Act. For whatever reason, the owner had thought Hoo had become a nuisance.

  “…You were told you weren’t wanted, too, huh…?” Haruyuki murmured, and the white-faced owl slowly folded his wings and whirled his head around, almost as if to say, So what?

  The abandoned Hoo had been cared for on the grounds of Matsunogi Academy by Utai, but with the blood loss from his wound, he had apparently been near death. Even after they saved his life, he lost his home with the elimination of the Animal Care Club, and if they hadn’t found him a place that would take him, he wouldn’t have been able to avoid being put down in the end. So the fact that Hoo was alive like this now was precisely because of that girl’s earnest efforts.

  But there was nothing pitiable or miserable about the Hoo inside the hutch now. His form was, to the last feather, noble and beautiful. Of course, this was nothing more than Haruyuki’s feelings, but at the very least, Hoo didn’t care whether anyone needed him or not. He simply lived his own life in his own world.

  “…You’re pretty cool, huh?” Haruyuki murmured and stood up from the bench before thrusting his own arms straight up and straightening his back.

  The idea of seeking out the eyes or words of others as the basis for a positive image of yourself was in and of itself a mistake. Your only choice was to find that image inside yourself—even if it was small like a grain of sand—and build it up bit by bit. Fortunately, he had a pile of difficult challenges to tackle every day. He had to make sure that the class exhibit for the school festival the next day actually worked properly, and he had to make it through the exams that would attack him after that. And then there were that week’s Territories in another fifteen minutes. As he cleared these hurdles one after another, he should definitely find something on the other side.

  Right, I mean, that’s what I’ve been doing so far.

  He heard the sound of light feet behind him and turned around to meet the eyes of Utai, who had changed into her white dress-style uniform. The girl, four years younger than he was, looked directly at his face with eyes filled with a deep wisdom and then grinned as if she’d found something there.

  UI> THANK YOU FOR YOUR HELP CLEANING. LET’S FIGHT HARD IN THE TERRITORIES, TOO!

  The characters spelled out were simple, but he felt sure she’d said it because she sensed his unending doubt and fear.

  Nodding, Haruyuki also put some strength into his reply. “Yeah! Let’s do this!”

  The Territories—team battles where Legion fought Legion for the right to control an area—were held every Saturday at four PM.

  The attacking side formed and registered an attack team in advance through the BB console and then moved to the target area—in the real world—and went on standby. Once four o’clock rolled around, the leader would accelerate and open the normal duel matching list, where the name of the ruling Legion would appear at the top. They would then select that name and challenge them to a duel.

  The defending side also registered the defense team in advance and went on standby within the territory area. But the advantage for the ruling Legion was that they could come out in defense even if their real self was in a different territory, as long as it was an adjacent territory. In other words, if they were on standby at Umesato Junior High in Suginami Area No. 2, it was possible to defend No. 1 to the north and No. 3 to the west.

  Therefore, a connection to the global net was a must. In school, only the machines that lived in the student council office were allowed to connect globally, and then just after school, but Kuroyukihime had secretly gone around the former restriction. She had given Haruyuki and the other members of Nega Nebulus access privileges for the student council machines and enabled a global connection by using a special device as a stepping-stone in the in-school local net.

  Thus, Haruyuki and Utai sat down next to each other on the bench by the animal hutch to take part in the Territories from there. One battle took the same thirty-minute maximum as a normal duel—1.8 seconds in real time—but their standby time got longer when there were many teams attacking. Haruyuki handed Utai a juice box he’d brought, and she pulled a small paper bag of fried karinto cookies out of her shoulder bag and offered them to him.

  “Th-thanks.” Haruyuki accepted the small bag with gratitude, and the instant he saw the words Goshiki Karinto printed on it, a feeling of joy welled up in his heart again, and he naturally screwed his face up.

  UI> DO YOU LIKE KARINTO THAT MUCH? Utai typed with a curious look on her face.

  “Y-yeah.” He hurriedly bobbed his head up and down. “They’re my favorite. Thanks, Shinomiya.”

  It was true that he loved them, but the reason for his smile was because he was reminded of a Burst Linker whose name sounded just a bit like the word karinto. But he had gone to the trouble of keeping it secret up to now, so he couldn’t exactly start blabbing at this point. He recomposed himself and checked the clock on his virtual desktop—3:55 PM.

  “Okay, the meeting’s gonna start soon, so let’s connect to the student council server,” Haruyuki said, moving his finger at the same time as Utai.

  When he tapped an icon that was placed slightly deep within his 3-D field of view, individual authentication was carried out, and then an ADD NETWORK dialogue window was displayed. Hereby, Haruyuki and Utai were connected to the closed net that Kuroyukihime had built inside the student council machines for Territory prep, in addition to the Umesato local net.

  They waited like this, and when the clock turned to 3:57, the familiar sound of acceleration filled his ears, while the letters announcing the start of a duel burned brightly in his field of view. But, of course, this was not the actual Territories. They were using a normal duel via the Legion Master to have a strategy meeting prior to battle.

  When Haruyuki’s duel avatar Silver Crow stepped down onto the white earth of the Moonlight stage, a shrine maiden clad in scarlet and unbleached cloth descended in a place slightly removed. This was Ardor Maiden, controlled by Utai.

  Although the two of them were sitting on the same bench in the real world, Maiden was a spectator, so their initial appearance locations were automatically separated.

  As a general rule, spectators could not come within ten meters of duelers, but parents and children, or members of the same Legion, could circumvent that rule. While Haruyuki waited for Utai to walk over to him, he destroyed a couple of the thin conifers reaching up into the sky like lances and charged his special-attack gauge a little. The meeting would take place on the grounds, but walking from the rear courtyard would have been slightly annoying.

  The shrine maiden avatar stopped before the extremely small temple that had been the animal hutch in the real world and peered inside. “So Hoo isn’t over here, after all,” she said.

  “W-well, Brain Burst only recreates terrain, so…,” Haruyuki replied.

  Turning back to him, Maiden’s red eye lenses flashed. “Once, an elephant at a zoo in the real world turned into this super huge mammoth in the Primeval Forest stage…I heard a rumor.”

  “Whaaaat?! I wanna see that. Okay, how about we test it out at the Ueno Zoo?”

&nb
sp; “Are you asking me on a date?”

  “D-da—?! N-no, that’s, I mean, it’s not that—I mean, from a purely strategic Burst Linker point of view…” Haruyuki grew flustered, and Maiden giggled happily. The real-world Utai was all silent smiles, so he could only hear her laughing on this side. And even then, it was fairly rare.

  Unconsciously, Haruyuki had started to laugh with her when they heard the heavy sound of destruction from somewhere off in the distance. At the same time, Black Lotus’s special-attack gauge, displayed in the upper right of his field of view, suddenly increased—Kuroyukihime had destroyed some kind of massive object. The reason was, of course, that Haruyuki was late to join them.

  He flinched, pulling back into himself, and then hurriedly spread the wings on his back. “O-okay, I’ll head to the grounds first!”

  It would have been good if he could have carried Utai as he flew, but unfortunately, he couldn’t move her, since she was a member of the Gallery. Waving, he left Utai in the rear courtyard and took off at an acute angle.

  In a single breath, he had flown over the second school building, the inner courtyard, and the first school building. A slender silhouette came into view in the center of the grounds, illuminated by the pale moonlight. One of the two large spotlights that should have been there had been severed at the base and was gone. A shiver ran up his spine once more before he landed and bowed deeply.

  “I-I’m very sorry I’m late!”

  “No, no need to apologize. I’m happy the members of the Legion get along with one another.” It was clear that the voice of the jet-black duel avatar responding thusly, the Black King, Black Lotus, was extremely sour. She couldn’t have heard the conversation about dates and all that, but at times like this, the ESP of Kuroyukihime did not follow the rules of the Accelerated World.

  Fortunately, as he struggled with whether to try out further excuses, he heard the sound of the other avatars appearing around them. Through the Automatic Follow function, Ardor Maiden, Cyan Pile, and Lime Bell had been teleported there.