Signal Fire at the Water’s Edge

by Reki Kawahara

  On the verge of disappearing, this voice shuddered violently. She pressed her small hand gently against Haruyuki’s chest and gripped the T-shirt he wore instead of pajamas.

  “…Me taking the position from my predecessor to become the head of Promi was half me yanking myself up. But I don’t regret it. The Legion’s only got good kids in it, and thanks to Promi, I met Pard. So I…I want to protect Promi, protect Nerima area. But…But…” Here, Niko cut herself off and slid across the sheets to press her forehead firmly against Haruyuki’s chest. “…Even I know it already. I-I’m weak!”

  This voice, so painfully squeezed out, shot through Haruyuki’s heart. He desperately reached out a hand and wrapped it around Niko’s slender shoulder. “Th-that’s not true. You’re so strong, Niko. If you weren’t, you’d never have made it to level nine…”

  “I made it, which is why I know. If I seriously went one-on-one with them—not just the originators Knight and Grandé, but even Thorn or Radio or Lotus, I—I couldn’t win.” Niko lifted her face and turned damp eyes on Haruyuki before continuing with a look that smiled through the tears.

  “…I’ll tell you something. When the Armor of Catastrophe took over Cherry six months ago, I used some forceful means to crack you in the real and get into the house. To have you catch the Armor with your flight ability…But it wasn’t just that. I—I was freaked out to the bottom of my heart at the re-formed Black Legion, at the Black King coming back to the Accelerated World. I figured if she was gonna attack, the first place she’d go was Nerima. And if the Black King came after me herself, there was no way I could win. So. Crack Silver Crow in the real when you were still low-level. Try to make it so she can’t attack, get some insurance. That’s the cowardly, cheap way I was thinking.”

  From her wide-open eyes, a fat tear finally spilled out. Even so, the self-deprecating smile remained on her lips, and Niko added in a thin voice, “And then…And then, so, like. You and Lotus, you’re both good kids. You actually listened to me, let me stay over here. You ate with me, played video games with me, slept beside me. I was super-happy, relieved. But I’ve been lying to you and Lotus ever since that day. Putting on a show of being strong, talking like we were equal. But the truth is, I’m not a pure color, I’m a fake red. I’m just the same as he is, giving myself the title of king!”

  “N-no, you’re wrong. You’re totally wrong!!” Haruyuki shouted as he wrapped his other hand around her slender back and pulled her to him. “Niko, you’re not a fake anything! You’re strong and braver than anyone! You’re an amazing leader for your Legion! I mean, Blaze and them that we met in the Territories today, they all had total faith in you; they adored you. There’s no way a fake could inspire that.”

  “But I, like, I can’t protect them!! I couldn’t even protect Cherry, my own and only parent!!” Niko gave a blood-curdling shriek, and she pressed her face into Haruyuki’s chest again. The small fists clutching his T-shirt were clenched so tightly that they threatened to crush themselves. “…I feel it. Something’s about to happen in the Accelerated World. Something bigger than the ISS kits, bigger than the appearance of Metatron. I mean, the mutual nonaggression treaty between the six major Legions probably won’t last forever. If…Radio and the other Kings seriously tried to crush me and Promi again…”

  “Even still…Even still, you wouldn’t lose! Isn’t that why you’ve worked so hard to get an even greater power than your Invincible Fortress Mode?!”

  “If level nines seriously tried to kill one another…at the end of the day, all the rules go out the window. It would turn into an Incarnate free-for-all. You know it too. I can’t use an attack-type Incarnate technique. What produced my duel avatar is fear. I wrap myself up in a shell of weapons, like a hedgehog, and desperately try to get my distance from the outside world. That’s my true nature. No matter how I enhance my range or my ability to flee with Incarnate, it’s— I totally can’t beat their destructive Incarnate with that.”

  Niko’s tone gradually weakened as she reached the end of the sentence. The tension ran out of her left hand, and she let it flop down onto the sheet. She clasped her knees to her chest and curled up into a ball as if trying to withstand a sudden chill.

  Although he wanted more than anything to say whatever it took to cheer her, Haruyuki’s mouth was too stiff to move. Niko had indeed told Haruyuki and Takumu that the only Incarnate techniques she could use belonged to the range and movement expansion categories; she could never learn attack or defense expansion techniques. And in fact, Haruyuki was the same. Of the Incarnate techniques he had currently obtained, Laser Sword and Laser Lance were range expansion and Light Speed was movement expansion; he couldn’t use a single technique to enhance his attack or defensive abilities.

  Despite this—Haruyuki took a deep breath and said, “…Then I’ll protect you.” The slender back under the palm of his right hand trembled slightly. “If you get into a jam, I’ll come flying. Anytime. And I’ll knock whoever it is flying with a destructive Incarnate that’d make an originator shake.”

  “…Can you use somethin’ like that?” Niko asked, her voice so faint that if they hadn’t been pressed up against each other, he couldn’t have heard it. But even so, it had just a little of her normal swagger back.

  “Nobody can beat me when it comes to negative power! A giga terrorist technique that’ll massively blow up an entire duel stage, not to mention a king, to force the whole thing to an end. Well, I’m going to develop it, anyway…”

  “So, like, you’re prob’ly gonna drag me into that, too,” Niko muttered, slowly relaxing her curled-up body and lifting her face. Her eyes were red, and there were more than a few droplets of water resting on her eyelashes, but there was a faint smile on her lips, too. She raised a hand and pinched Haruyuki’s cheek lightly. “…You really are a simple one, huh? What if I was fake crying, and it was all a plan to get you to switch sides to Promi?”

  The instant she said that, grinning, a silver light tumbled from her eyes. There was no way these droplets, as beautiful as gemstones, were fake tears.

  However, she only showed him her crying face, which made her look her actual age, for an instant. Releasing his cheek, Niko closed the fifteen-or-so-centimeter gap between them to zero without a moment’s hesitation. The tips of the toes of her bare feet touched Haruyuki’s legs, and her smooth forehead was pressed against his left cheek.

  “Huh? Uh, um, uhhh.” Although this wasn’t the first time they’d slept in this bed, they’d never been in close contact like this, so Haruyuki belatedly raised a tense voice in alarm. But before he could say anything else or move, he heard, “…Thanks.”

  The voice came to him with the movement of her lips and sank into his insides. His head suddenly grew quiet, his rising heart rate calmed back down, and finally a strange tranquility enveloped Haruyuki. “Y-yeah,” he responded, not sure himself what he meant by that, and he brought his right hand to her unbound hair in an unconscious movement, stroking it gently.

  Niko relaxed even more, and murmured in the most natural voice, “I can’t even tell this stuff to Pard. Sorry for barfing all this up on you.”

  “It’s okay. If you just need someone to talk to, I’m here anytime. Oh, of course, when I said I’d protect you, I was serious, though.”

  “Heh-heh, I’m counting on you. For serious,” she replied, laughter mixed into her voice, and then Niko looked up at Haruyuki for just a moment before quickly bringing her face back down. “As a thank-you for listening to all that, I’ll tell you a little thing while we’re at it.”

  “Huh? …What?” He cocked his head slightly to one side, and unexpected words came back to him.

  “The reason why me and Pard and the girls in Negabu look out for you.”

  “S-sorry?” He blinked rapidly in confusion, but this was actually a somewhat—no, fairly—interesting topic. Because it was true that, each time the troop of girls in the Legion interacted with him in a favorable manner, somewhere in his heart, he w
ondered, Why someone like me?

  But the words Niko uttered after a pause were also entirely unexpected. “Maybe you won’t get it if I just tell you in words, but…us F-type Neurolinkers are always afraid when we’re in the real world—just a little, but still. A different type of fear from what I was talking about before.”

  “A…fraid? Of what?”

  “Yeah, right. Other people. Or more specifically, real-world M-types, I guess.”

  “E-em type? You mean, guys?”

  “Yeah. When we’re duel avatars in the Accelerated World, we’re protected by hard armor. F-types and M-types all have enough power to fight as equals. But once the duel’s over and we return to the real world, that power disappears. The more hours you spend as a Burst Linker, the more you end up feeling how weak and helpless your real body is.”

  “…Helpless…real body…” It was just as she’d said before: This was indeed something Haruyuki had a hard time understanding intuitively. Naturally, when he was in the real world, he dreamed of being able to fly the way Silver Crow did. He might have even wished he were as strong as Crow. But that wasn’t a serious thing; it was a simple fantasy.

  No. That’s not right. That day when he had accelerated for the first time in his life, he had wanted it so, so badly.

  After learning about the miraculous power of the BB program from Kuroyukihime in the lounge of Umesato Junior High, the first thing Haruyuki had asked about was whether he could win in a fight if he used Brain Burst. At the time, he had desperately wanted to beat down the boy who was bullying him so cruelly. He had asked this precisely because he was painfully aware of how helpless the real him was.

  If Kuroyukihime hadn’t quickly ejected those delinquents, Haruyuki might want that even now. To be able to fight like Crow in reality, too. And he might have lived in fear because of the fact that he couldn’t.

  Once he had thought things through that far, Haruyuki finally saw the current situation in a new light. He swallowed hard. “Uh…So, Niko, right now. You have that fear of me, too…?” he asked timidly.

  “Yeah, that’s what I’m trying to say.” Fortunately, Niko didn’t pull any “Big brother, you’re scary”–type mode changes that were so bad for his heart; in fact, she patted his cheek. “…You basically don’t make me afraid at all. And I think it’s prob’ly like that for Pard and Lotus and Rake and Maiden, too. And this, it’s pretty incredible, y’know? I mean, at school, just ending up alone with a boy for some weird reason is enough to make me nervous. Even though I know in my head, he’s not gonna do anything to me, it’s still no good.”

  “…You’re scared even with the social cameras…?”

  “Yeah. You can’t not feel it. The fact that I’m not protected by armor, that I don’t have special attack or Enhanced Armament or anything at all—that fear just gets bigger the more time you spend in the Accelerated World. At any rate, maybe you just always end up having fear wrapped around you when you’re in the real world.”

  “Th-that’s…” Haruyuki earnestly fumbled to say something that would ease Niko’s fear, even if just by a little. But the “Niko, you’re strong” that he’d repeated over and over before wasn’t encouraging or meaningful in this context. It was precisely because she had gained such impossible power in the Accelerated World that she felt this unease in the real.

  Haruyuki opened and closed his mouth over and over again until Niko, watching, started giggling happily for some reason. “It’s okay. You don’t have to say anything. I told you before, you’re the only one I’m not afraid of. And it’s not just that. When I’m with you—when I’m with Haruyuki, the fear built up inside me just gets smaller. When I stick to you, I feel safe. The frozen negative Incarnate…it’s like it gets purified into a warm light…”

  “……Um…” Haruyuki no longer had the slightest clue about how he should react.

  “I’m sure the old hands of Negabu gotta be feeling the same way.” Niko leaned in as if she were entrusting her whole body to him. “At the curry party the other day, I mean, their faces…Their guards were completely down, they were all happily laughing. I mean, come on.”

  “…W-were they…?” He had been totally unaware of this, and he could only recall moments of harsh severity with Kuroyukihime and Fuko, so he cocked his head to one side. After thinking about what Niko had said for a while, he furrowed his brow. “Um. So then, Niko, does that mean from the look of me, I’m the absolutely safe and totally harmless character?”

  In that case, what did that really say about him as a real M-type? He had just started to have uncharacteristic thoughts like this when Niko stretched out both hands and clapped his face between them.

  He expected her to yank his cheeks out to either side as hard as she could, like always, but Niko kept her hands as they were and smiled peacefully. “That’s not it. I’m talking about what’s inside this round head. Your mind. It’s ’cos we know you’re always thinking of us for real with everything you got that we feel safe with you. I mean, I’ve even thought this— Someday, I gotta thank you properly. That idea.”

  “Th-that’s—I mean, I’m not actually doing anything.”

  “It’s fine. As long as you stay close, that’s enough. So don’t go changing on me, ’kay? Even after you go up levels and get to be a high ranker, you just stay the way you are. And…like, if I someday—” She cut herself off there and moved the hands on Haruyuki’s cheeks down to his neck. Then she brought her face closer and touched it to him like she was trying to listen to his heartbeat before she closed her eyes, a smile still upon her face.

  When we wake up tomorrow morning, Niko will probably be the same old Niko. She’ll be back to the absolute power of the Red King, not showing me the slightest weakness, much less tears. But I won’t forget. Niko’s the Red King, but at the same time, she’s a girl two years younger than me. And I promised to protect that Niko.

  Haruyuki carved this into his heart as he peacefully sank over the edge into the rising waterline of sleep. When he closed his eyes, he heard a faint breathing in his ear. As he listened to it, his thoughts started to expand, and immediately before they faded to black, the source of the sound shifted a little, and he felt like something was touching his cheek. But Haruyuki didn’t know whether that was a dream or not.

  7

  Haruyuki bathed in the refreshing morning light and the faint breeze, breathing it in. It was as though the rainy season had ended without waiting for the announcement from the meteorological agency.

  Right outside his condo building was the sidewalk of Kannana Street. This was the time of day when, normally, the wave of people heading toward Koenji Station would have been unbroken, but today, it was deserted. Because it was Sunday, of course.

  Instead, beside Haruyuki was a redheaded girl who appeared to be only yet half-awake. He watched her as she yawned spectacularly, charmed, and then was suddenly faced with her glare.

  “Don’t just go starin’ at a lady yawning.”

  “I-I’m sorry—”

  See! Same old Red King! Haruyuki tucked his head back into himself.

  “So then hand it over already.” Niko thrust out her right hand.

  “H-huh?! A yawn-viewing fee?!”

  “Nooooooot that! Obviously, the invite pass for your school festival!”

  “Oh! R-right— Wh-whaaaaat?! You’re coming?!”

  “I said that first thing yesterday! The reason I came to your place at all was one-third to apologize for the Territories, one third to ask about the attempted EK…”

  “…So the last third was the school festival—?”

  “Yes! C’mon, hurry up! Two passes!” Niko dexterously waggled the first two fingers of her thrust-out hand.

  “Huh?” Haruyuki was forced to blink rapidly once more. “Two? You and who else?”

  As if on cue, in the opposite lane of Kannana, an actually cool motor sound passed by, drawing a line between itself and the energy-saving EVs. He reflexively turned his gaze that way and saw a
familiar deep red. The source of the sound disappeared from his field of view for a moment but then made a high-speed U-turn at the light just ahead and came north in the lane on this side of the road.

  Vrrrruun. Stopping in front of Haruyuki and Niko, regenerative brake echoing through the air, was a large electric motorcycle Haruyuki had ridden before. The rider in a sports bike jacket and jeans was, of course, the deputy of the Red Legion, Blood Leopard.

  Pard popped up the visor of her helmet with her left hand and waved her fingers at Haruyuki and Niko. “Hi.”

  “G-good morning.”

  “Morning, Pard. Sorry, I shoulda waited for you on the other side.”

  “NP. It’s this country’s fault for still driving on the left.” After casually criticizing the system, Pard extended a hand to Haruyuki. But she didn’t mean for him to jump on the back, of course.

  Each student was given three invitations for the Umesato Junior High festival. Haruyuki had already given one to Rin Kusakabe, but he still had the others, since he had no one to give them to. He had actually thought about inviting Niko and Pard, but then he’d heard about the attack on the festival at a school in Shimokitazawa in Setagaya Ward—naturally, in the Burst Linker sense—and he had put off making any decision until the very day was upon them.

  But when he thought about it, the leader of the attack group, Magenta Scissor, had announced she would invade the east from Setagaya Area No. 2, and Umesato Junior High, being due north, was basically in a totally different direction. The possibility she’d be targeting the school festival that day was vanishingly small.

  The remaining issue was what the reaction of the other Nega Nebulus members would be when they found out that, in addition to Rin, he had invited Niko and Pard. But it was possible they would be delighted at the unexpected faces visiting the school, wasn’t it?

  No, no, thinking about it, he couldn’t say it was a certainty that the school festival would end with all of them meeting each other in the real. After all, Kuroyukihime, Chiyuri, and Takumu would have their hands full with the booths and presentations of their own groups.