“Roger that. We can meet in ALO, too. Thanks for coming.”
“So long, Shino-non.”
“Bye, Asuna.”
She waved to the couple as they headed off to their JR train, then turned the opposite direction to walk to her subway station. She peered out from under her umbrella again, but the prying gaze she’d felt just moments earlier was gone, as if it had never been there.
INTERLUDE I
Body temperature is such a strange thing, Asuna Yuuki thought.
Beneath the navy sky, its clouds curling with orange after the end of the rain, they walked along hand in hand. Kazuto Kirigaya had been lost in thought for the last several minutes, looking down in silence at the brick tiles on the pedestrian path.
Asuna lived in Setagaya and Kazuto had to get back to Kawagoe, so they normally took their separate trains at Shinjuku Station, but for whatever reason, Kazuto had said he would escort her closer to home this time. It was almost an entire hour extra for him to get home from Shibuya, but she sensed something different in his look this time, so she accepted the offer.
After they got off at her stop, Miyanosaka Station on the Setagaya Line, they naturally wound up holding hands.
There was something about the experience she found reminiscent. It was a memory that was as painful and frightening as it was sweet, so she normally didn’t allow it to surface, but every once in a while she felt it when she was holding his hand.
It wasn’t a memory of the real world. It happened in Grandzam, the city of iron towers on the fifty-fifth floor of old Aincrad.
At the time, Asuna was the vice commander of the Knights of the Blood guild and had a greatsword-wielding personal guard named Kuradeel at her side at all times. Kuradeel held a fanatical obsession toward her, and when Kirito (Kazuto) prompted her to consider quitting the guild, he tried to use a paralyzing poison to kill her friend.
With two fellow guildmates dead and Kirito nearly gone as well, Asuna drew her rapier with rage. She tore away at Kuradeel’s HP bar, but at the point where one more hit would have finished him, she hesitated. Kuradeel used that moment of weakness to strike back, and he was stopped only when Kirito recovered from his paralysis.
The pair returned to the KoB headquarters on the fifty-fifth floor, announced their departure from the guild, then walked through Grandzam without a destination, hand in hand.
She’d played it cool at the time, but underneath, her heart was swirling with disappointment in herself for hesitating, and guilt for having forced that burden onto Kirito. Just as she was feeling that she didn’t have the right to be considered a member of the elite front line or to walk at Kirito’s side, she heard his voice telling her that he would do whatever it took to get her back to her old world.
In that instant, a powerful drive overtook her. The next time, she would protect him. Not just that time, but every time. In any world.
She still vividly remembered how the hand that had been so cold the entire time she held it suddenly erupted with warmth like a furnace. Even now, after the flying fortress fell and she escaped from the land of fairies, the memory of that skin temperature came back to her when she held his hand.
Body temperature truly was a strange thing. It was merely the by-product of the expenditure of energy to keep the body running, but the sharing of that heat through touch also seemed to impart some kind of information. As evidence of that, Asuna knew that Kazuto was silent because he was hesitant to tell her something important.
Kazuto had just said the human soul was photons trapped in the microtubules of brain cells. Could that light exist not just in the brain but throughout all the cells in the body? A quantum field made from fluctuating motes of light in the shape of a human being, connected through their palms…Perhaps that was what she was truly feeling when she felt his body temperature.
Asuna closed her eyes and said a silent reassurance.
It will be all right, Kirito. I will always be watching your back. We’re the greatest forward and backup in the world.
Kazuto came to a sudden stop, and so did Asuna at the exact same moment. When she opened her eyes, the striking of seven o’clock caused an old-fashioned wrought-iron streetlamp to flicker to life.
There were no other people to be seen on the residential walkway in the dusk after the day’s rain. Kazuto slowly tilted his head to look at Asuna with those dark eyes of his.
“Asuna…”
He took a step forward to drive away his hesitation.
“…I think I’m going to go.”
Asuna knew that he had been weighing a decision about his future path. She asked, “To America?”
“Yeah. I spent a year doing a lot of research, and I think the brain implant chip they’re studying at a university in Santa Clara is the proper next step in the evolution of full-diving. I think that’s the way that the brain-machine interface is going to go. And I really, really want to see when the next world is born.”
She looked directly back into those eyes and nodded.
“It wasn’t all just fun times…There were hard times and sad times, too. You want to find out why you were called to that castle, and where it’s been taking you.”
“I could live hundreds of years, and I’d still never see the end of that road,” Kazuto quipped with a grin. However, he soon fell silent again.
Asuna sensed that he couldn’t bring himself to say that they’d be living far apart. She was going to keep that smile on her face and tell him her own answer that she’d been incubating within her for so long—but Kazuto found his voice then, his expression the exact same one she remembered from when he proposed to her in Aincrad.
“So, I…I want you to come with me, Asuna. I just—I can’t do it without you. I know this is an impossible request. I’m sure you have your own ideas for your future. But even still, I…”
He hesitated—Asuna’s eyes had bulged, and she snorted.
“Huh…?”
“S-sorry, I shouldn’t laugh. But…is that seriously what you’ve been worrying about all this time?”
“W-well, of course.”
“Oh, sheesh. My answer’s been decided for ages before all this.”
She reached over and enfolded Kazuto’s hand with both of hers. She gave him an even bigger bob of the head and said, “Of course I’m going with you. I’ll go anywhere to be with you.”
He stared at her, blinked several times, then gave her a dazzling smile of the sort he rarely ever showed. He lifted his other hand to her shoulder. She let go and circled her arms around his back.
Their lips were chilly when they first touched, but they soon melted into warmth. Asuna imagined the light that made up their souls trading infinite information. She knew for certain that no matter what world, no matter how long they traveled, their hearts would never be apart.
In fact, their hearts had been connected long ago. Since the moment they disappeared in a rainbow aurora above the collapse of Aincrad, or perhaps even before that—as lonely solo players who met deep in a dark labyrinth.
“So does that mean,” Asuna wondered aloud several minutes later as they resumed their walk through the neighborhood, “you don’t think the Soul Translator you’ve been testing is the proper evolution of full-diving? The brain chip is a connection on the cellular level like the NerveGear, but the STL goes further to interface on a quantum level, right?”
“Hmm…”
Kazuto tapped the metal end of an umbrella against the bricks.
“Yes, it might be true that the scope is much more advanced than the brain chip. But it’s just…too progressive. It won’t just be a few years until they can downsize that tech for home usage. It’ll take at least ten or twenty. I feel like the STL I’ve been working with isn’t meant for the purpose of simply allowing a person to full-dive into a virtual world…”
“Huh? What’s it for, then?”
“I think it might be a tool to understanding the fluctlight, the human consciousness…”
�
�Hmm…”
So the STL wasn’t the goal but the means. Asuna tried to imagine what knowing a person’s soul would gain you, but he resumed talking before she could fathom such a thing.
“Besides, I think the STL is more like…an extension of Heathcliff’s ideas. I don’t know why he created the NerveGear and SAO, why he victimized thousands of people, why he fried his own brain and unleashed the Seed into the world…or if there was even a reason for those things. But I can’t help but feel like the STL possesses some part of his essence in it. I do want to know what it was Heathcliff sought, but I don’t want that to be my destination. I don’t want to feel like I’ve been dancing in the palm of his hand all along.”
For a moment, Asuna envisioned the long-gone man’s face and nodded.
“I see…Hey, is the guild leader’s mind—or thought-mimicking program or whatever—still alive on some server somewhere? You mentioned that before, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, just once. The machine he used to commit suicide was a primitive prototype of the STL. In order to read the fluctlight, it had to use a high-powered beam that fried all his brain cells. I think it was probably an hours-long process and far more painful than when the NerveGear destroys a brain…Whatever reason he went to those lengths to make a copy of himself, I think there has to be a connection to what Rath is trying to do with the STL. The only reason I took Kikuoka’s offer…might be due to something in my heart that still wants to see an end to that…”
He looked up to the sky, where the last vestiges of red were vanishing. Asuna gazed at his profile for a while, then squeezed his hand harder and whispered, “Just promise me one thing: that you won’t do anything dangerous.”
He turned back to her with a grin. “Of course. I promise. Now that I know I get to go to America with you next summer.”
“Well, you need to study hard and get a good SAT score if you intend to do that, remember?”
“Ugh,” he grunted, then cleared his throat to change the topic. “At any rate, I ought to at least introduce myself to your parents once. I’ve exchanged an occasional e-mail with your father, Shouzou, but I’m a bit afraid of what your mother thinks…”
“Oh, don’t worry, she’s become much more understanding. Oh, right…If you’re coming this far, why don’t you just stop in?”
“What?! I-I don’t know…Maybe I’ll visit once the term finals are over. Yeah.”
“Good grief…”
Eventually they reached a small park that was fairly close to her house. It was customary for them to part here when Kazuto walked her “home.” She came to a hesitant stop and turned to face him. He looked her in the eyes.
Right when they were only inches apart, heavy footsteps thudded in their direction, and Asuna instantly pulled away.
Trotting toward them from the T-intersection behind her was a figure, a short man wearing dark clothing. When he spotted Asuna and Kazuto, he approached, apologizing in a high-pitched voice.
“Excuse me, which way is the station?” the young man asked, bowing profusely.
Asuna pointed to the east. “Just go straight down this road, then turn right at the first ligh…Ah!”
Kazuto had abruptly reached out and pulled her shoulder back. He stepped forward and moved her behind him.
“Wh-what’s…?”
“You. You were outside Dicey Café. Who are you?” he demanded. Asuna sucked in a sharp breath and looked closer at the man.
He sported long hair with the occasional highlight. His sunken cheeks were thick with stubble. There were silver earrings in his ears and a thick silver chain around his neck. He was wearing a faded black T-shirt and black leather pants with a metal chain that jangled at his waist. Despite the hot season, he wore heavy lace-up boots. Weirdly enough, he seemed to be covered in dust.
Narrow, mirthful eyes peered out between shaggy bangs. The man tilted his head in apparent confusion at Kazuto’s accusation, but that suddenly gave way to a dangerous look, his pupils glinting.
“…No use trying a sneak attack, then,” the man lamented, drawing back one corner of his mouth in what couldn’t be distinguished as either snarl or grin.
“Who are you?” Kazuto commanded again. The man shrugged, shook his head a few times, then sighed theatrically.
“Oh, come on now, Kirito. You forgot my face already…? Well, I guess I did wear a mask before. But I haven’t forgotten yours for a single day since then.”
“You…”
Kazuto twitched. His back went straight. He pulled back his right leg and dropped his weight.
“You’re Johnny Black!” he accused, and his hand shot like lightning to grab empty space over his shoulder—the exact same spot where Kirito the Black Swordsman once reached for the hilt of his beloved Elucidator.
“Bwa-ha! Heh-ha! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! You got no sword there, bud!” The man named Johnny Black cackled, writhing with high-pitched laughter. Kazuto slowly lowered his hand, though it wasn’t a relaxed gesture.
Asuna knew that name. It belonged to one of the more famous red players of old Aincrad, the ones who eagerly and intentionally killed other players. He had formed a partnership with Red-Eyed Xaxa within the PK guild called Laughing Coffin, and they were responsible for more than ten deaths between them.
…Xaxa. That name had come up just half a year ago, too. He was the ringleader of the horrendous Death Gun incident.
Xaxa (Shouichi Shinkawa) and his younger brother had been arrested, but their companion got away, according to the report just after the incident. They assumed he had been caught long ago. But that meant the third man, named Kanamoto, must be the man before them now…
“You’re still on the lam?” Kazuto rasped. Johnny Black, real name Kanamoto, grinned and pointed his index fingers at them.
“Of course, baby. Xaxa’s locked up now, so I gotta do the heavy lifting, right? The last member of the Coffin. It took me five months to track down that café, then another month of staking out the place…They were hateful days, man.”
Kanamoto grunted and tilted his head back and forth. “But Kirito, without your swords…you’re just a weak little kid, ain’tcha? You look the same, but you sure ain’t the swordsman who crushed us all so badly.”
“Speaking of which…what can you do without those cheap poisoned weapons?”
“Y’know, only an amateur judges a weapon by what he can see.”
With snakelike quickness, Kanamoto swung his right hand behind his back and grabbed something from his shirt.
It was a strange item. A toylike grip jutted out of a smooth plastic cylinder. Asuna thought it was just a water pistol at first, but the way Kazuto tensed caused her to hold her breath. Her confusion turned to fear when she heard his voice.
“That’s…the Death Gun…!”
He pushed out backward with his right arm to further distance Asuna from the man, meanwhile pointing the end of his folded umbrella toward Kanamoto.
Even as she unconsciously took a few steps back, Asuna’s eyes were glued to the plastic “gun” the whole while. She knew that was not a simple plastic gun but an injector using a high-pressure gas, loaded with a terrifying chemical that would stop a human heart.
“As it happens, I do have a poison weapon. Too bad it’s not a good old knife, though.”
Kanamoto hissed with laughter as he waved around the tip of the injector, the only metal part on the tool. Kazuto kept the umbrella pointed carefully at him and shouted, “Asuna, run! Go and get someone!”
After a moment’s hesitation, she spun and raced away. As she ran, she heard Kanamoto say, “Hey, Flash! You’d better tell everyone you know…that it was Johnny Black who finally took down the Black Swordsman!”
It was about a hundred feet on a straight line to the intercom of the nearest house.
“Someone…somebody help!!” she shrieked at maximum volume as she ran. She wondered if it was a mistake to run and leave Kazuto behind, if it would have been better for them both to leap on him and subdu
e the weapon. She was halfway to her destination when she heard the sound.
It was the short, sharp sound of depressurization, like the bottle cap of a carbonated drink or a blast of hair spray. But the knowledge of what it meant in this context was so terrifying that Asuna’s legs faltered, and she slipped and put a hand to the wet bricks.
She turned slowly to look over her shoulder.
It was a ghastly scene.
The prod of Kazuto’s umbrella was jammed all the way into Kanamoto’s right thigh.
And Kanamoto’s injector was pressed against Kazuto’s left shoulder.
They both lurched over and toppled onto the street.
The next several minutes were as surreal as a black-and-white movie.
Asuna worked her disobedient legs until they took her to Kazuto’s side. She pulled him away from the agonized Kanamoto, who was clutching his leg, and urged her boyfriend to hang in there as she pulled out her cell phone.
Her fingers were as cold as ice. She fumbled across the touchscreen, and her voice quavered as she called the emergency center, relating to the operator their location and status.
Belatedly, onlookers appeared. Someone had called it in, because a police officer soon shoved his way through the crowd. Asuna answered his questions briefly and merely clung to Kazuto’s body after that.
His breathing was short and shallow. He could say only two words through the pain: “Asuna, sorry.”
After an eternity of several minutes, two ambulances arrived. They loaded Kazuto into one, and Asuna rode in it with him.
The paramedic examined Kazuto, who was lying unconscious on the stretcher, making certain that his airway was clear, then promptly turned to his assistant and shouted, “He’s in respiratory failure—get me the ambo bag!”
They produced a breathing device, a clear mask that went over Kazuto’s nose and mouth. Asuna nearly screamed in terror, but through a near-miracle brought about by the severity of the situation, she was able to tell the paramedic the name of the drug.
“Um, he was hit with a drug called…succinylcholine! In the left shoulder.”
The paramedic looked briefly stunned, then barked out new orders.
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