“Actually, I just woke up,” I said, returning her smile. Asuna walked into the room, and we embraced. She rubbed my arms and back with her free hand. “Hmm, still only about ninety percent of the normal Kirito. Are you eating enough?”
“I am. Tons. It’s just going to take a while; I was bedridden for two whole months,” I said with a wince and a shrug. “In better news, I’ve got a leave date now. Three days from today.”
“Really?!” Asuna’s face lit up. She walked over to the flower vase on the side cabinet. “Then we’ll have to celebrate. First in ALO, then in real life.”
She deftly changed the water in the vase, took out the wilted flowers, and added the two new pale-purple roses she’d brought before putting the container back on the cabinet.
The roses seemed to be doing their best to reach a pure-blue color, but they weren’t quite there yet. I murmured my agreement, staring at the flowers.
I sat on the bed, and Asuna plopped down next to me. Another wave of homesickness hit me. But it didn’t have the same sharp pain that I’d felt moments ago.
Asuna leaned against me, so I put my arm around her shoulder and let my mind wander through distant memories.
On the day we’d been left behind in the Underworld as it plunged into the maximum-acceleration phase, we’d flown off the World’s End Altar with its abundance of flowers, crossed the black deserts and strange reddish rocks, and first rejoined the Human Guardian Army at the ancient ruins where the last battle had taken place.
Already Klein, Agil, Lisbeth, and the other players from the real world were gone. They’d been booted off the simulation when the acceleration resumed.
I calmed down the weeping Tiese and Ronie, then got an introduction to the young Integrity Knight named Renly, courtesy of Sortiliena. He and I reformed the group, then led them back north along the path until we reached the Eastern Gate again.
Vice Commander Fanatio, Deusolbert, and the apprentice knights Fizel and Linel were still stationed there at the gate. We shared a nervous reunion, and I also met the knight named Sheyta for the first time. She gave me a message from a man called Iskahn, who was the champion of the pugilists and temporary commander of the Dark Army.
He said that the Dark Army would be pulling back to the Imperial Palace far to the east, and once the surviving generals had finished cleaning up and reorganizing after the war, they would come seeking peace with the human army in one month’s time. Sheyta volunteered for the role of envoy. Once she had left on her gray dragon for the east, the remaining members of the Human Guardian Army resumed marching back to Centoria.
Somehow, the people at the towns and villages on the return trip already knew that peace had arrived. We received great cheers and welcomes from local residents wherever we went.
When the trip to Centoria was finished, the days passed in a blur. We helped Fanatio, now the highest-ranking Integrity Knight in the wake of Bercouli’s passing, to rebuild the Axiom Church, offer reparations to the families of the soldiers who had died in the war, and rebuff the attempts of the four imperial families and other high nobles to seize power in the chaos and vacuum of the postwar order. A month passed by in a flash.
When we returned to the site of the Eastern Gate for the peace talks, Asuna and I were introduced to Iskahn, who was now the official commander of the Dark Army.
The warrior was a bit younger than I was, with fiery-red hair. He said to me, “You’re the brother of Leafa, the Green Swordswoman? I hear you cut Emperor Vecta in two. Not that I doubt your story…but let me test you with just a single punch.”
And for some reason, Iskahn and I decked each other in the cheek, right there in the midst of peace talks. He seemed satisfied by it, though. Then he said, “Yeah…you’re tougher than the emperor…and even me. I hate to admit it, but I will…You’re the…first…”
That was where my memory cuts off.
The next scene I could recall was waking up on the STL’s gel bed as Takeru Higa announced, “I’ve finished the process of deleting your memory.”
According to Dr. Rinko Koujiro, from the day that we established peace in the Underworld, Asuna and I had apparently remained active for two hundred years, well beyond the capacity of the fluctlight. But I couldn’t recall a thing about what we did during all those years or how we avoided the destruction of our fluctlights. Even more frightening, I had completely forgotten the conversation I’d had with Higa and Kikuoka right after waking up in Roppongi.
The same was true for Asuna. But she just gave me one of her usual fluffy smiles and said, “Knowing you, I’m sure you stuck your head into all kinds of squabbles and had to go on the run from the advances of girls everywhere.”
That sapped any interest I had in trying to remember, but no matter what, the painful sense of loneliness never went away. That was because as the Underworld ran (in real time) to this very moment, Fanatio, Renly, and the other Integrity Knights; Iskahn and the dark lords; and Ronie, Tiese, Sortiliena, and Miss Azurica were no longer alive…
Asuna sensed what I was thinking and whispered, “It’s all right. Your memory might have vanished, but the memories still linger.”
That’s right, Kirito. Don’t cry…Stay cool, said a tiny, familiar voice deep in my ear.
The voice was right. Memories weren’t saved only in the areas of the brain dedicated to storing information. They were a part of the fluctlight network that spread across all the cells of the body.
I blinked to blot away the tears in my eyes and caressed Asuna’s hair. “Yes. I’m sure…I’m sure we’ll see them again someday.”
A few minutes of gentle, silent tranquility passed. The sunlight began to color and darken against the white wall. Every now and then, the shadows of birds returning to the nest crossed its surface.
It was another knock on the door that broke the silence.
I looked over, curious; there weren’t any scheduled visitors at this hour. Eventually, I let go of Asuna’s shoulder and said, “Come in.”
The door slid open, right as a familiar—and obnoxious—voice said, “Well, well, I hear you’re going to be released soon, Kirito! We’ll have to throw you a party— Oh! Oops! Am I interrupting something?”
I sighed and replied, “I’m not going to demand you tell me how you already know my discharge schedule when Miss Aki just told me about it…Mr. Kikuoka.”
The former Ministry of Internal Affairs Virtual Division official, former Ground SDF lieutenant colonel, and former commanding officer of the fake company Rath was thankfully not wearing the same hideous shirt he’d had on the other day. Seijirou Kikuoka slipped into the hospital room.
He was dressed in a sharp, expensive suit with a necktie, despite the summer heat. His short hair was in perfect order, and there wasn’t a drop of sweat on the skin behind his narrow, frameless glasses. From every angle, he was an elite businessman working at a foreign capital firm—if not for his usual smirk and the cheap paper bag he was carrying.
Kikuoka lifted the bag and said, “This is for you. We need you to build up your strength again. I was really thinking hard about what to get you, but Dr. Rinko demanded that I bring you proper store-bought products. At any rate, to get your energy back, you need fermented food—that’s a must. So I’ve got a grab bag here. First is some salted and fermented goldfish sushi from Lake Biwa, and they’re hard to find, because they don’t catch many anymore. Then there’s some fermented tofu from Okinawa. That’s perfect with some aged awamori to drink. But the best is the cheese—and it’s no ordinary cheese. This is super-fancy washed-rind cheese straight from France called Époisses! They wash it in marc every day during a long aging process, until it begins to support a wonderful array of microorganisms on its surface, giving it the most stunning bouquet of—”
“The refrigerator’s over there,” I said, pointing to the corner of the room to stop Kikuoka from going on.
“Huh? Why?”
“Thanks for the souvenirs. The fridge is over there.”
“The windows are sealed! What do you think will happen if you open all that stuff in here?”
There was already a peculiar fragrance coming from the paper bag, and Asuna began to inch away with a look of terror on her face.
“I think it smells nice…Also, I know I keep saying this, but you don’t have to be so stuffy around me. It feels awkward,” Kikuoka said casually, sticking his food in the refrigerator and moving to the chair for guests.
The grin returned to his face. He crossed one leg over the other and steepled his fingers atop them. “I’m really very glad about all of this. I mean, you were in a physically comatose state ever since the Death Gun accomplice attacked you at the end of June. I suppose it’s a sign of your youth that you’re doing this well after just a single week of PT.”
“Well…uh…I suppose I should thank you for the help,” I admitted, crossing my arms. It was the STL’s fluctlight-stimulation therapy that had helped heal me when I fell into cardiac arrest after the attack. This man had used a falsified ambulance to ferry me from the hospital to a helicopter that took me all the way to the Ocean Turtle, out at sea near the Izu Islands.
I understood why he couldn’t use official methods. I needed STL treatment at the soonest possible moment, and Rath was a secret organization that couldn’t be made public. If anything, Kikuoka deserved my full gratitude for going to such dangerous lengths to save my life.
And yet…
“…Mr. Kikuoka, when I dived into the Underworld the second time, and I woke up in that little northern village without having my memory blocked—was that really an unexpected accident?”
“Of course,” Kikuoka said, his smile waning. “There would have been no point to dropping the real-world you into the Underworld. It would have contaminated the simulation. In reality, of course, Yanai had already corrupted it, and you ended up putting the world back on the proper track…”
“To think that someone who worked for Sugou was hiding in plain sight at Rath,” I said, glancing over at Asuna. She was rubbing the back of her arms with disgust, this time over something other than smells.
“It gives me chills to think that I was in a dive for hours while that slug-man was in the next room over. And then he shot Mr. Higa…I wish that we could have arrested him and forced him to admit to all his crimes…”
“It may have been for the best that he died that way, actually,” Kikuoka said quietly. “If Yanai had met up with the attackers like they planned and managed to flee to America, I can’t imagine that his clients in the NSA and Glowgen Defense Systems would have kept their agreement with him. If anything, they’d probably use whatever means necessary to make him spill everything he knew about the STL and artificial fluctlights, and then they’d dispose of him. No one man can hold his own against the darker side of the American military business.”
“Is that why you’re officially dead, Mr. Kikuoka?”
“You could say that,” he said, admitting that when it came to facing a massive enemy alone, playing possum was the obvious choice.
Asuna was concerned about his aloof manner, given the very serious topic. “What are you planning to do next? Dr. Rinko’s been put in charge as Rath’s public face. You can’t really hang out around the Roppongi office anymore, can you?”
“No need to worry. There are still many things for me to do. For now, I need to pour all my efforts into securing the Ocean Turtle and the Underworld.”
That was the topic I wanted to know about most, and I leaned forward with interest. “Yes, that! What’s going to happen to the Underworld now…?”
“We can’t be too optimistic about the current momentum,” Kikuoka said, rearranging his legs and looking out the window. “The Ocean Turtle is still in the Izu Islands, anchored and locked down. There are only a few people on board to maintain and protect the reactor. There are defense ships patrolling the area constantly…which all sounds good, but that’s just a holding pattern. The country doesn’t know what to do next.”
“In all honesty, the government would love to immediately shut down Rath, or the ‘Oceanic Resource Exploration & Research Institution,’ and assume control of all artificial fluctlight tech. If you mass-produced them, you could create all the ultra-low-cost labor you would ever need. Even the biggest factories on mainland Asia couldn’t keep up. But if they do that, it will retroactively reveal the truth of the assault on the float. It would be a massive scandal—an attack by the NSA and American military contractors, with the acting administrative vice-minister of defense taking dirty money to delay a military response for twenty-four hours. That money also trickled to Diet representatives of the ruling party—men who have financial connections to major domestic weapons companies. If all of this goes public, it will rattle the current administration to its core.”
But despite the force of his words, Kikuoka’s expression was anxious.
“Rattle…That’s it?”
“Exactly. It will rattle them but probably not be enough to overturn them entirely…The party will simply decide to cut loose the vice-minister and a few Diet members. Rath will be dismantled, and its property will be absorbed by one of the major zaibatsu conglomerates. Alice will be taken, and there’s no way they won’t reinitialize the Lightcube Cluster on the Ocean Turtle…”
“No…no, they can’t!” cried Asuna. Her hazel eyes flashed with righteous fury.
I pressed my fingers against her arm and urged Kikuoka to continue. “You’ve got a plan in mind for how to head this situation off, don’t you?”
“It’s not a plan…as much as a hope,” Kikuoka said. His smile had a rare honesty to it. “The hope is that while the government grapples internally with the decision, we are able to formulate an effective public argument…That’s it. In other words, to convince people that artificial fluctlights deserve human rights. And to do that, we need as many real people in the real world as possible to have as much contact with artificials as possible. That, in fact, is the very purpose of The Seed Nexus, you might say.”
“…Yeah…I see.”
“But for that to be feasible, the Underworlders will need high-capacity connections to The Seed Nexus first. The government shut down the satellite connection on the Ocean Turtle. I’m going to try to get that restored next. We took the initiative with that press conference. That’s given us a bit of time to work with for now.”
“The connection…,” I murmured, gazing at the orange sky outside the window.
Beyond the sunset were countless communication satellites, each traveling its own orbit. But only a few of them would have the kind of throughput needed to communicate with the Underworld. I didn’t have to think about it very hard to understand that Kikuoka’s plan was going to be tremendously difficult.
But now that it had come to this, there was nothing that a mere high school student like me could do. My only option was to have faith and leave it in more-capable hands.
I turned away from the window, took a step forward, and bowed my head.
“Mr. Kikuoka…please. Please save the Underworld.”
“You don’t need to ask me,” Kikuoka said, standing and smiling. “The Underworld is a dream I’m willing to put my life on the line for, too.”
Former lieutenant colonel Seijirou Kikuoka left as quickly as he arrived, leaving behind his tempting bag of delicacies.
Asuna exhaled and said, “His statements and attitude are very bold and reassuring…but I guess it wouldn’t be Mr. Kikuoka if I didn’t feel like there was something else behind it…”
“Oh, I’m sure there’s more. Several layers.” I chuckled, sitting back down on the bed. “Despite what he says, I’m sure that he hasn’t given up on the idea of giving the SDF domestic jet fighters with artificial fluctlights for pilots.”
“Wh-what?!”
“Of course, he wouldn’t think of forcing AI to operate them without free will—not anymore. But what if the Underworlders voluntarily agree
to serve? The Integrity Knights and dark knights are born to be warriors, for example.”
“Oh…that’s true…Hmm.”
While Asuna pondered that, I got to thinking as well. What was Seijirou Kikuoka’s true intention? It was probably something I couldn’t even imagine at this point. Something vast and distant beyond the boundaries of government and national defense, something like Akihiko Kayaba’s vision…
“Ah! Oh no! Look at the time!”
“Hmm? Visiting hours don’t end soon…”
“No, I mean…it’s today! The meeting of the nine fairy leaders of ALO!”
“Oh…that’s right,” I said, clapping my hands together.
In the invasion of the Ocean Turtle last month, about two thousand Japanese VRMMO players had attempted to fight back against PoH’s plot to insert a large number of foreign players into the Underworld, by converting their own avatars in a suicide rescue operation. Except for a few hundred survivors, all the rest of those characters had died.
Today there was going to be a major meeting within ALO for the purpose of revealing the full truth to those players who had served as heroic volunteers. Since Asuna and I were in the center of that whole situation, we had to be in attendance, of course.
“Hmm, I don’t think I have time to get all the way home,” Asuna said, rather unconvincingly, and pulled an AmuSphere unit right out of the tote bag she was holding. “Guess I’ll just have to dive from here.”
“…”
I blinked a few times and noted, “Um, Asuna…it would seem to me that you fully intended to do this…”
“Oh, no, this was just a precaution. Let’s not get hung up on minor details!” she insisted. Then she smiled and suddenly flopped onto the bed on top of me. Despite being alarmed at the thought of what would happen if Miss Aki came in to take my temperature, I put my arm around her waist and squeezed.
The only sound in the silence was our breathing.
There was no way for us to know how we’d gotten through two hundred years in the Underworld—longer than the supposed limit of the fluctlight itself. Perhaps, like Administrator, we’d spent a very long time sleeping, or perhaps we’d been able to manipulate the STL from within to continually organize our memories. But one thing I could say for certain: I made it back to the real world only because Asuna was at my side.
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