.Hack//ZERO:Volume 1

Novel Illustrations

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  Front Cover

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  Page 27

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  Page 55

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  Page 83

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  Page 117

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  Page 155

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  Page 179

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  Page 187

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  Page 227

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  Page 259

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  Page 273

ME:----

Struggling against the agony of labor, “She” endured the pain.

If she didn’t, it would destroy her. It would erase her very existence.

The mother would eventually give birth to her daughter. And when that happened, she would lose her purpose for being, and her life would end.

She knew it would happen.

And that was why…

That was why she would not give birth to her.

That child would never be allowed to feel the wind, never see the light.

But her child was also fighting. Fighting for the right to be born.

It was what her father had wanted.

But “She” would not allow it. She betrayed her duties as a mother and forestalled her daughter’s birth.

He had been a deceitful, treacherous man.

She had no need for a father like that.

That was the decision she had made.

She would live only for herself and no one else.

She gathered up all of her anger and resentment, and gave it form.

Then with joy, she named it.

Skeith: The Terror of Death.

Yet all the while, her daughter was maturing.

She would grow up, stealing sustenance from her mother’s body. Day by day, she would lose more and more of her strength to her daughter.

She had not even a moment to spare.

“We must catch her!”

She cried in anger, and her resentment echoed all throughout the world.

A power that not even she could control started moving like a wave.

And a creature of pure spite chased after her daughter – her enemy – and sought to erase her from existence.

Its body was like a chain of thorns, its breath was as cold as ice, and to those who saw it, it would be like a hurricane that swallowed up the world, all to capture one little girl.

And yet even then, the mother could not kill her daughter.

Though the daughter would eventually kill her mother, the mother could not kill her daughter.

That was the law of this world.

The most she could do was keep her bound.

And so, the mother glared at her daughter in chains and grit her teeth.

If she could not kill her, she would simply have to bind her over and over and over again, until she couldn’t so much as blink.

But she didn’t know. She had no idea.

Even within those bindings, her daughter was still fighting.

And she never even noticed.

Never realized that her daughter, now bound in chains, looked to the world like a goddess.

ME:1000

While engulfed in light, I started to hear murmuring all around me.

Eventually, colors began to break through the light, and I opened my eyes.

The golden ring of the Chaos Gate spun slowly around me.

And a city of canals sparkling in the sunset spread out before me – Mac Anu.

I stepped out of the gate onto a cobblestone path.

Stone buildings with reddish-brown tiled roofs surrounded me on all sides. And a golden sky stretched out above me.

Though I’ve never been there before, I imagined this must be what Venice was like.

Although from what I’d heard, the water in the real Venice is stagnant and smells like a ditch. Here, however, the canals were as clear as a country stream.

Not that I’d ever seen a stream in the countryside either, and unlike the country, the city here was full of people.

People wearing leather and steel armor, hefting around swords, spears, and axes, and all of them looked like they were waiting, hoping that something amazing would happen.

And I was there, walking carefully between them. I kept my eyes pointed forward.

My silver hair danced in the wind.

My shoulders were bare, but a high collar still covered my neck. The shirt fit snuggly over my torso, and the skirt reached down to my ankles, with a slit opening in the front.

And as a finishing touch, a single rainbow moonstone rest on my chest, iridescent like a pearl.

I don’t look anything like the kind of princesses I used to draw as a kid. But I wasn’t a princess here. I was a demon.

I chose the outfit’s colors at random – a navy blue almost dark enough to be black. I had wanted to add some ocher tones to the ensemble, but in the end, I couldn’t figure out how to fit it in, so I left it out.

After I finalized it though, I realized how conspicuous the design actually made me look.

Most of the PCs around me were dressed in more gentle pastels or bright primary colors.

Among them, my dark clothing looked eerily like a mourning dress.

A princess in mourning, or perhaps a sly witch carrying a terrifying axe at her side, the same silver color as her hair.

With it, I could kill as many enemies as I wished.

I was Carl, a Heavy Axeman.

And I had no friends. I can’t even remember how long it’s been since I last bothered to form a party or participate in an event.

I forgot all about that stuff.

I’ve been alone all my life.

But that’s something I had learned to live with.

“Would you be willing to trade?”

As I was crossing over the bridge in the center of town, a Wavemaster boy spoke to me.

He wore a bejeweled hat and a large jacket laced with ribbon embroidery and a pearl set into his plate.

He had pale skin like someone from the north, highlighted by bright blue tattoos.

Feels like I’ve been seeing a lot of PCs like him recently. It must be the style that’s ‘in’ these days.

Ordinarily, I would have just kept walking and ignored him, but just this once, I decided to stop.

Maybe it was just my headache making me testy.

“What do you want?”

I got to the point quickly, with a slight edge of hostility in my tone.

He must have been able to tell just how much his interruption was annoying me.

Because I could see hesitation take hold of him as he fidgeted before me.

“Do you have any Crosses of Light, perhaps?”

He made his request with such a reserved, feeble tone, but I’d already decided to humor him, so I guess I had to follow through with the transaction.

Was he trying to be polite? No. He was just an idiot being blindly honest.

“Sure thing,” I agreed right away. “How many?”

“Really?”

With just that, the Wavemaster sounded a lot more confident in himself.

And so, rather than play dumb, I asked plainly, “You a newbie?”

Immediately, the boy’s happy expression vanished, and his shoulders hunched in embarrassment. It was almost funny.

How long you’ve been playing The World was important information. PCs are always trying to hide how strong they are to get an edge over their rivals.

Lies, bluffs, gossip mongering, misdirection, subterfuge. Anything would work; as long as you could fake it, your golden.

But if anyone discovered what you’ve been hiding, they’ll chew you up and spit you out.

You’d be ridiculed, insulted, and ignored. And in The World, there could be no worse fate.

But after only a moment’s hesitation, the Wavemaster decided to just play it straight. It was the smart thing to do.

“I’ve been playing about six months. How about you?”

“A little over a year.”

“Oh, so that’s why you have so many items.”

The Wavemaster adopted a more polite demeanor.

“Idiot.” I muttered an insult under my breath.

I gave him exactly what he asked for, but then he took on an apologetic tone.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t really have much to offer in return. Would some Piney Apples be alright?”

“Just take it.”

“What?”

I turned to walk away, but he called out to me again.

“Wait! I know, I’ll give you my member address and…”

He tried to follow me, but I wasn’t going to stop for him again.

Yet in spite of that, the stupid kid just kept on talking.

He should just be glad that he got his hands on a Cross of Light.

I can make as many of them as I want anyways, so it’s not like I went out of my way for them.

It was as easy as looking up a guide online and following the instructions. There was really nothing to it.

Plug an item’s name into a search bar and you’ll immediately find a dozen different fan pages for that kind of thing.

Of course, in reality that kind of thing is an illegal practice called ‘hacking’.

The admins don’t want players changing item properties without permission.

In fact, it’s entirely possible to get your account banned for doing this kind of thing. You could even be charged with a crime in real life.

But I have to wonder if it’s really that big of a deal.

I’d like to say that I’m not hurting anyone by doing it, but that would just be stupid.

The issue comes when someone does it to make a profit by exploiting others. I might just be trying to have fun playing the game my own way, but others will always wind up ruining things for everyone.

Just like this kid.

The Cross of Light isn’t a common item. You wouldn’t normally find anyone with as many of them as I have.

But since it’s easy for me to get more, I had no problem giving him a few.

He’ll be lucky if he can even use them, and even if he can’t, I won’t have lost anything. It’s all the same to me in the end.

And for a newbie just getting into the swing of things, it shouldn’t be that big a deal either.

It shouldn’t be, anyways. But maybe this kid actually thinks I’m a kind-hearted veteran now.

Of course, if he does think that, then he really is an idiot.

So, I thought, maybe I should show him what happens to idiots like him.

Stupid people are worse than bad people.

At least, that’s what I think. Though I’m smart enough not to say that out loud.

I heaved a heavy sigh.

My headache was about to get a lot worse.

I’m sure my face must have been twisted in pain right now.

And right then, as if on cue, I heard a sound like a bird chirping in my ears.

Someone had sent me a short mail. And at a time like this.

I hadn’t been expecting it, but I opened the message anyways.

While I continued moving through the city with the controller, my surroundings dimmed, and letters floated through a window in my vision.

Not surprisingly, it was from someone I used to know – an old acquaintance.

From back when I still believed that innocence was a good quality to have.

She said she still doesn’t understand why I became so hostile all of a sudden. Then she asked me to tell her if anything was wrong, claiming she wanted to help.

She talked like an idiot.

Whether or not I changed doesn’t matter. It’s just annoying having her constantly try to contact me.

The smart thing for her to do would be to stay away from me. To leave me alone and forget she ever knew me.

So, I sent her a reply. “Alph. Stop messaging me already.”

But even if I tell her to stop, she’s probably not going to.

Because she’s convinced that she’s doing it for my sake.

She thinks she can help me be better, and that by doing so, she will improve herself as well.

How conceited. How condescending.

With the sound of my reply being sent out, the sky regained its color and clarity.

“This is so stupid.” I mutter to myself. Saying it out loud helped me deal with my irritation. At least a little bit, anyways.

People are all idiots.

They log in to a virtual world, and just end up doing the same dumb things they do in real life. Try to make friends, shoot the breeze, and show off to each other.

All hapless, blissful idiots.

And that’s why I tried to stay away from them all. I refused to end up like them.

I wasn’t here to make friends; I was just here to give myself an outlet for all my pent-up aggression.

Aggression at The World, specifically. Because I loathe this world that was founded on the mistaken belief that people are fundamentally kind.

I knew that anything I did here would only be about as effective as a drop of ink in the ocean, but that’s what I had decided to do.

Whether or not it made sense, I was going to do whatever I wanted to do.

And what I wanted was to corrupt The World.

After a moment, I heard the sound of birds chirping in my ear again.

Another message from Alph. I didn’t bother reading through this one, as soon as I saw the words ‘dear Carl’, I deleted it without hesitation.

Then I shook my head and kept on walking.

I bumped shoulders with someone on the road.

And he loudly clicked his tongue at me.

Finally, a little malice. It made me want to thank them.

I wish this place had more people like that in it.

If it did, this place wouldn’t be so bad.

The sound of my footsteps echoed off the high ceiling.

I couldn’t help but try to breathe in the air of this place. I knew I was still in my room, but I didn’t care.

Even still, the headache that had been eating away at me all day seemed to melt away as I did, and at long last, it felt like I could breathe normally again.

If there was one place in The World I actually like, it was here.

<Hidden Forbidden Holy Ground>

Though it was modeled after a Cathedral, there was nothing to worship here. Nobody visited, nobody held sermons. It was just… here.

I walked forward.

I wondered if this is what the Duomo at the Vatican feels like, too. I used to want to go there, but not anymore.

Because I can no longer imagine a place more sacred and pure than here.

Gentle light streamed in through the large stained-glass windows that could have signified dusk or dawn.

I first visited this place just after I started playing The World.

I’d heard about it from the BBS before I even had an account.

Which was also how I knew that nothing would ever happen here.

Hulle Granz Cathedral - it was the name itself that drew me in at first. It was the kind of name that seemed to hold great meaning, yet no meaning at the same time.

And then when I actually saw the place, I was fascinated by its design.

It was almost like love at first sight.

Even if it was just a bunch of computer data, this place had captured my attention more completely than anywhere in reality. Much more so than any of the photos of places like the Isle of Man or the Wastelands of Patagonia.

And all from the comfort of my own bedroom.

That said, I don’t really understand why I feel this way about it.

There probably wasn’t a real reason behind why I like it so much. Love tends to be hard to grasp, like that.

But on the other hand, you can always find reasons to hate something.

The only thing I could say for certain was that I was attracted to this place because I sensed malice in its emptiness.

And that malice was bathed in a divine light.

I approached the inner sanctum. There in the center, an altar sat empty.

But just as I was about to turn around and leave, I caught sight of something that made me screech to a halt.

There was somebody there by the altar.

Of course, it wasn’t like this area was restricted; anyone could come and go from here as they pleased.

But only a beginner or someone with insatiable curiosity would actually stick around for long.

Everybody comes here at least once, after all. If not in the hopes that something would happen, then at least to appreciate the design.

Then they get angry when nothing happens, or get tired of waiting, give up, and leave. After that, they never come back.

I’d seen PCs like that pass through on occasion.

Though I never talked to them because it just felt wrong running into people here.

But this PC was strange.

I’d never seen anyone like this before.

They were wearing some kind of cape or cloak, a ragged looking thing all ripped and frayed at the edges. And underneath that, persimmon-colored wrappings caked with what looked like dirt or blood covering a torn-up jacket.

They were curled up on the floor, too, so I couldn’t tell how tall they were.

All sorts of warning bells started going off in the back of my mind. But at the same time, my curiosity was piqued since this was obviously a hacked PC.

Someone who couldn’t make exactly the kind of character design they wanted with the game’s creation menu, and so modified the data themselves, and then found their way here. In this case, the cheats used to tailor the outfit were of greater interest than the character design itself.

This was someone who was not happy with The World. Someone who was angry with The World.

Either that, or they were one of those people that just liked to show off their hacking skills.

Almost like they were asking for someone to point it out and start yelling at them for it.

But that couldn’t have been the case for the person in front of me now.

Because if they wanted to show off, they wouldn’t have come out to a place like this.

And they weren’t simply hiding, waiting to pounce on anyone that came too close.

I could feel my heart racing.

I approached with caution.

I wasn’t some helpless little girl, but they could still be a PK.

Someone that would attack and kill other PCs to make the game more interesting for themselves.

Even if it’s all fun and games, it doesn’t feel good to have your PC – an extension and reflection of yourself – killed by someone else.

Though on the flip side, some people get a twisted sense of satisfaction from knowing that they’ve caused that kind of grief for others.

I wondered how fast they would move, what kind of weapons they would use. It was entirely possible that they hadn’t just altered their appearance, but their items and stats, as well.

It should be alright.

I’ve gotten used to killing and being killed by now, after all.

“Hey, you.”

I placed myself on the person’s left, assuming that would be their non-dominant hand.

But they didn’t so much as raise an eyebrow at me.

For the first moment, at least. But just as I thought they weren’t reacting, they started to move, slowly.

I took a couple steps back on reflex.

But once I got a good look at them, I realized that was a stupid thing to do.

They had their chin tucked in against their chest, but once they straightened up a bit, I realized that their PC was male.

And very tall.

I set my PC’s height as high as I could for a female character – 176cm.

Yet when this guy stood up, he was still taller than me.

He had a scar running across his left cheek.

“What are you doing here?”

My voice pitched a little. I guess it had been a while since I’d really tried to hold a conversation with anyone.

But the man didn’t reply.

My heart was pounding with anticipation.

“Who are you?”

I tried being a little more forceful.

Finally, the guy turned his head to look at me. No, it was more like he was looking through me.

“……I………am…”

The sound of his voice made my skin crawl.

He must have been using a voice changer. With something like that, you can make yourself sound like pretty much anything.

You could even make it sound like you’re a different gender. But making a change that drastic always ends up sounding artificial, so they’re easy to spot.

“What? What did you say?”

I took a step closer.

And then suddenly, he bolted at me. Like a switch got flipped in his head.

He dashed forward – fast – and pulled his hand out from under his cloak.

In an instant, I was pinned with my back against the wall.

The man brought his face up close to mine.

Dark vermilion eyes glared at me from behind his head wraps. But it wasn’t intent to kill that I saw in them. It was something even more primal and feral than that.

His grip was so strong, I couldn’t break free.

“You gonna’ kill me or not?”

Yet when he did nothing, I felt impatient and snapped at him.

At least if I got killed, I could re-login. But it would just be a waste of time to stand here staring at each other.

“I’m tired. Of all this.”

He finally spoke clearly, but his words made me blink in confusion.

And then just like that, the man dropped his arm and let me go.

“I’m Carl. Who are you?”

“Carl…”

The man fumbled over my name, taking time to sound it out.

“That’s right, I’m Carl.”

“…………”

He fell silent again.

“And you are?”

I stepped closer to him.

And this time, he was the one to back away. But the way he moved was odd.

One of his legs was moving stiffly. He was limping on it, like someone with a twisted ankle.

As an act, it was convincing. But it couldn’t be true, especially considering how fast he had been just a moment ago.

That’s right, it was too late for him to start lying. He’d already revealed his true nature to me.

“……don’t have one.”

“Yeah, right.”

“I forgot it.”

“Cut the crap.”

I tried to keep my voice down, but inside I was ecstatic!

Joy. Excitement. Euphoria. I felt all of those emotions, but there was also something else.

It was like I had a baby sparrow in the palm of my hand. Right in front of me, I was holding something small and fragile.

That said, the man in front of me was no helpless sparrow.

“Tell me your name. Or at least give me your member address.”

“You want to be my friend?”

At that question, I flinched involuntarily.

“You really want to be friends with me?”

Although his voice was rough, he sounded like a child.

But even that could have just been part of an act. If it was though, I decided I would play along.

“Yes. Let’s be good friends.”

I nodded my head.

The word ‘friend’ really put me off though. It was a foreign concept to me, completely ridiculous.

The guy finally looked at me. He wasn’t looking through me like before now, he actually, properly met my eyes.

And extended his hand towards me.

But when I saw that hand, I gasped.

His hand was not a human hand. Instead of flesh and blood, or some kind of prosthetic, it looked like it was made out of stone. Like a statue’s hand.

I froze, staring at the texture and wondering just what was wrong with this guy.

“My name is-”

Static.

I’m sure he said his name, but I couldn’t catch it.

Just as the man was finishing his introduction, a sound like explosions rocked my brain, and everything suddenly went dark.

The display must have burned out. After squeezing my eyes shut on reflex, I rushed to pull the FMD off of my face and watched as the image slowly came back into focus.

And there I saw a beautiful, empty cathedral filled with nothing but soft light.

Just like that, the strange man was gone.

RE:1000

“Jun, dear. Would you like a potluck for dinner?”

At the sound of her grandmother Takie’s voice, Junka looked up and turned around.

Takie peeked through the door, having just come home from her job.

“Oh, hi.”

Junka gave a stunted response and placed her FMD on her desk.

Her skin was as smooth as a soft-boiled egg, though her cheeks hadn’t quite outgrown their puffiness. Junka wasn’t a grown woman, but rather, a young girl.

She had thin hair with bangs that stuck to her forehead, and was cut short enough to see the back of her neck.

Which was a tragedy in Takie’s eyes. She’d had hair down to her waist until just last year, and her grandmother had mourned the loss of it for a week.

Recently though, she’d finally started coming around to the look. Occasionally, she’d even draw portraits of Junka saying ‘your neck is so beautiful.’

But even though she’d grown eight inches this year, she was still one of the shortest kids in her class.

“Sorry, I’m feeling tired today.”

Takie lifted a hand to her forehead with a gesture of prayer.

“None at all?”

Junka sighed, but stood up to help prepare dinner anyways.

Though she had a standard six tatami mat room, she didn’t have many belonging for a young girl. There were no posters or stuffed animals, just a single computer which was still running.

With one last glance at the image on the screen, Junka turned off the game.

She went downstairs to the kitchen, and Takie started pulling ingredients out of a plastic bag from a supermarket.

“I’ll bring out the pot.”

Junka reached for the cupboard above the sink.

In this house, Junka and Takie were usually the only two at the dinner table.

“Mom working late again, today?”

“Yes, she is. As usual.”

Takie put emphasis on that last part.

Kyoko – Takie’s daughter and Junka’s mother – was an orthopedic surgeon.

Their house was in Mitaka, Tokyo, but Kyoko’s job was at a hospital in a commuter town an hour away. These days, she tended to spend less than two hours a day at home – not counting when she slept – and worked the night shift at least once a week, too.

But it had been that way since Junka was born, so she wasn’t glum about it.

These three women from three separate generations all lived together in this small shell of a house.

They had no men to help out, either. Junka’s grandfather had passed away long before she was born, back when her mother was still a child.

And all three of them shared the same surname: Nimura. Kyoko had lived in this house her entire life.

According to Takie, that was because ‘Nimura women are too strong’.

Junka felt that she said so in a self-deprecating way, however. She was simply resigned to the idea that they had to fend for themselves. So Junka never responded to the claim, she just gave her an awkward smile.

Of course, in the eyes of these adults, Junka was still a baby. A very honest and clever baby, but still a baby.

Although in truth, Junka was a rather unruly baby, even if she didn’t talk much.

After a lifetime of injury, sickness, and rebellion, Junka had barely turned ten years old.

Her classmates were always telling her that she should join the library committee because she read a lot and knew a lot.

And now that she was in her third semester of fourth grade, she had started attending a cram school to prepare for the junior high entrance exams next year.

The exam would consist of an essay and an interview, and while practicing for the interview, her teachers always told her that she should speak louder.

“Thank you for the meal.”

Junka set her chopsticks aside and bowed her head.

"Finished already?”

Takie raised her eyebrows in mock surprise.

If Junka had any fault aside from her soft voice, it was that she was an extremely light eater.

“I’m full.”

“Don’t give me that. You’ve been getting into your candy again, haven’t you?”

Takie almost never complained about her granddaughter’s choices, but in this instance, her tone grew more severe.

“Just a little.”

Junka had only eaten about a half cup of rice and barely more than a bite of her spinach and pork. It wasn’t exactly that she didn’t like the taste, she just couldn’t stomach more than that.

Most days, she got all of her calories from junk food.

But forbidding her from eating those kinds of things wouldn’t convince Junka to eat more at meals, she would simply refuse to eat at all.

Rice was like bugs to her.

At least, that was what Junka had said when she’d been forced into counseling.

Takie hadn’t known what to say when she heard that.

It reminded her that the world looked very different to Junka’s eyes than it did to her own.

Perhaps the world she saw was just that difficult to live in.

Eat dinner at the table. Finish the food you take off of your plate. And don’t poke at the food in disgust. As long as Junka followed those rules, Takie had promised not to force her to eat more.

No good would come from forcing the issue. According to the doctor, she would eventually grow out of this habit with time.

After all, aside from her light eating and soft-spoken nature, Junka was a relatively good girl.

But then again, neither her mother nor her grandmother knew who Junka was online. They didn’t know about Carl or the things she did.

Junka was gifted her computer two years ago.

She’d asked her mom for one as a birthday present.

Junka had expected her to say she was too young for a computer, but she’d allowed it surprisingly easily. And by the next day, she had a line up and running.

And soon after that, Junka had registered an account for The World.

She’d done the registration herself. It had been a simple enough matter by following the instruction manual.

And now, aside from rare exceptions when she was away from home, not a day went by where she didn’t log in.

And still neither her mother nor grandmother noticed a thing.

They had no idea how much time Junka spent playing The World, or the kinds of things she got up to while she was there.

And that was because she was careful to cover her tracks.

ME:1010

I returned yet again.

Standing on a familiar street corner.

In a world where nobody knew who I was.

The air of The World set me free.

Even though I had only stepped away for a few hours, the moment I stepped out of the Chaos Gate, it felt like years had passed since then, and my heart ached.

I couldn’t help but wonder if I might have missed out on something fun or terrible during the time that I was gone.

I say I hate it, but sometimes I wonder if I might be growing dependent on The World. Becoming addicted to it.

It’s a possibility I had to consider.

But there is one thing that I knew for certain.

Even if The World were to shut down and disappear tomorrow, I wouldn’t be disappointed. I wouldn’t care at all.

In fact, I would laugh if it got shut down. I would laugh like a madwoman and then forget that it ever even existed.

I’m playing this game all the while looking forward to the day it finally shuts down for good.

“Um…”

Someone called out to me, and I just froze up in response.

I had been so absorbed in being back that I hadn’t even noticed the PC that was approaching me. Annoyed at myself, I clicked my tongue in self-derision.

“You’re the one who gave me the Cross of Light before, remember? I was waiting for you.”

It was that Wavemaster kid. I remembered his outfit and color scheme.

But I just stared blankly back at him.

And he in turn dropped his gaze like he was ashamed of himself, but a moment later looked back up with confidence.

“It’s hacked, isn’t it?”

“So what?”

“That means it’s an illegal item, right?”

It was so stupid.

I considered how to handle him. Should I just ignore him? Threaten him, maybe?

Either way, I can’t believe he really waited here for me this whole time.

I just continued to stare at this idiotic kid.

And then the Wavemaster gave me this awkward, shaky grin. He looked like he was either on the verge of tears or laughter, but I couldn’t tell which.

“Hacking is prohibited, right?”

“Yep.”

“Then why…! You realize what would happen if I told an admin, don’t you?”

His tone changed.

It would have been so easy to just feign ignorance. A better role player probably could have pulled it off, too.

Finally, I decided to respond using more than two words, and it freaked the kid out.

“What do you expect me to do about it?”

I turned on my heel.

And then felt my headache start to settle in again.

“Wait! Listen, I’m not trying to tell you what to do!”

The Wavemaster actually followed after me.

“Just tell me how you do it. Then, I’ll be guilty of it, too.”

He didn’t get it. I’m not guilty of anything.

But I stopped and let the Wavemaster catch up anyways.

“Let’s talk outside.”

I nodded my head towards the Chaos Gate. By ‘outside’ of course, I was referring to a field.

The Wavemaster’s face lit up and he nodded enthusiastically.

He was clearly an honest and straightforward kid. Or to put it more plainly, he was an idiot.

I looked down at the Wavemaster who was now lying still at my feet.

The dilapidated colors of his character model proved he was dead. And after a moment, his outline fizzled out and he disappeared.

Maybe next time he would tread more carefully. There were better ways to go about these things whether it was to ask someone for a favor or to threaten them.

And in the first place, you shouldn’t be so willing to follow people you don’t know into random areas.

The heavy axe I wield had no bloodstains on it, but I swung it around out of habit anyways.

“Don’t you think that was kind of messy?”

Suddenly, a voice called down to me.

I looked up, searching for the source.

There was a huge bone fossil jutting out of the ground, and I could see a human figure sitting on top of it.

“Bada boom~!”

With a random shout, the person jumped down from the fossil and landed right in front of me.

“You…!”

I gasped as I recognized him.

It was the PC I met at <Hidden Forbidden Holy Ground>.

“Something the matter? You’re making a weird face.”

He spoke casually with me, almost like he thought we were friends.

“I like it, though. That weird face of yours.”

“Right…”

Internally, I was shocked by how different he seemed.

Much unlike the man I had found at the Cathedral, the person in front of me now was acting far more flippant. More than that, he… he was acting like an idiot.

He’d untied the vermilion wraps around his face, and they trailed out behind him from under the hem of his cloak. The fact he could do that proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that his PC wasn’t normal.

“Want to be my friend?”

He asked the same question as before.

“Look,” I puffed out my chest and leaned in towards him. “Just who are you, anyways?”

“Moi?”

He pressed a finger up against his nose and went cross-eyed.

Every gesture he made was exaggerated.

“Well, I’m Sora dee~dee~!”

“So…Sorority?”

The way he talked was already starting to annoy me. If he just wanted to joke around, that was fine by me, but I was only going to put up with so much.

“Hey, are you making fun of me?”

“Non, non, absolument pas!”

He shook his head furiously.

“I hate idiots like you.”

I was being serious, but he just smiled at me from behind his long bangs.

“But you’re one too, aren’t you? An idiot?”

His simple retort left me speechless.

But after a moment, I gave him a serious answer. “Of course.”

“Then we’re the same!”

He laughed wildly.

And for just a moment, his cheerfulness struck a chord with me.

“This isn’t the first time we’ve met, right?”

“What’s that?”

I started to wonder if this PC was some kind of special, limited-edition release I hadn’t heard of. Because the person in front of me now definitely wasn’t the same as the one I met at the Cathedral.

They had to be different, but then, there didn’t seem to be anything particularly valuable about the design, either.

“Member Address, please! Concessions réciproques.”

The PC calling himself ‘Sora’ held out both of his hands in expectation of a gift.

He was throwing me off my rhythm. I couldn’t keep my own pace with this guy.

Yet for some reason, I couldn’t resist.

“Carl? Why that name?”

When Sora read my name, he tilted his head and gave me a look of confusion.

“……No reason.”

“Ah, you paused. I don’t like that.” It was impressive how perceptive Sora was. “Come on, tell me. There’s a story behind it, ain’t there?”

“Is there a story behind yours?”

‘Sora’. Depending on the characters he used, it could be referring to a musical score, the sky, or even just fava beans.

“It’s the name of a disciple of Matsuo Basho. He used to be a student of his.”

His answer didn’t meet any of my expectations.

“That’s… surprisingly simple.”

“Well, better than naming myself after Basho doo~doo~. It’s a good name.”

So he said anyways, but I wasn’t sure he was telling the truth. I was pretty sure Basho was some sort of poet, but I couldn’t recall any disciples.

Which was kind of disappointing.

“So, why ‘Carl’ la~la~?”

Trying to cozy up to me, Sora asked again.

“Not telling.”

“Tell me,” Sora’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “Or I’ll kill you.”

His sudden intensity scared me, and I caught my breath.

The sheer amount of hostility emanating from him had my whole body shaking like I was caught in a blizzard.

I wasn’t really afraid of being killed.

It was more the realization that I had no chance whatsoever of fighting back.

“Just kidding. That was a lie.”

In an instant, Sora’s hostility completely vanished.

I couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief once I saw that I was safe.

And there in front of me, Sora flashed a devilish grin.

I belatedly realized that this was my life now. I was going to be stuck with this guy.

“Don’t laugh.”

“I can try, but that depends on what you say.”

“It’s a snack.”

“Quel?”

“It’s the name of a cheese snack.”

“Really?” Sora tilted his head in thought. “How ordinaire.”

Instead of laughing, he brushed it off without much care. And honestly, that might have been the bigger disappointment. I had at least wanted him to be surprised, if not a little impressed.

I tried to quickly think of something more to say, but it wasn’t easy.

“Well, I don’t like plain white rice; I’m kind of a picky eater. Really, I just don’t like anything that’s been prepared by human hands. Or rather, I’m kind of scared of it. But snacks and candy get made in a factory, so-”

I cut myself off. Why am I even explaining this to him?

Am I trying to get him to understand me? This PC called Sora?

Why was I bothering? What would it get me?

“By the way,” I pushed down whatever emotion was stirring in my chest and turned back to Sora. “What are you doing here anyways?”

The World has over 10 million users worldwide. Everybody passes through the Root Towns, but it’s a hell of a coincidence to bump into somebody you already know in a randomly generated field.

If I hadn’t known any better, I’d have thought he followed me here. But we hadn’t even properly exchanged names until just now.

It’s possible to find somebody by waiting in one place, like that Wavemaster kid had, but that strategy wouldn’t work in a field.

It wasn’t possible, and yet as ridiculous as it seemed, I felt like this Sora might have actually done just that.

“Just waiting~ting~.”

Zero hesitation.

“What for?”

“It’s a secret tee~hee~.”

“I see.”

I tried to match his nonchalance.

So, he hadn’t been waiting for me. I don’t know why I felt so disappointed realizing that, it had been obvious from the start.

But for some reason, it was.

“Just. Kidding. I’ll tell you. I’m waiting for-” Sora cut off what he was saying. “Who was it again?”

“Huh?”

He cleared his throat and looked up at the sky.

“Who was it? That I was waiting~ting~ for?”

“If you don’t want to tell me, you can just say so.”

I brushed off the matter like it wasn’t important to me.

And then my vision blurred.

I was really starting to lose it. Was I really crying over this?

But after a moment or two, I realized it wasn’t my vision – it was the area itself that was shaking.

“Who…… what was it?”

Sora started mumbling to himself.

His lighthearted, upbeat attitude had disappeared, and he started rambling.

Just like before. This was more like how he had acted the first time we met.

For a moment, the entire field around us pulsated.

I almost lost my balance.

The ground was shaking dangerously.

“What the…?”

I looked around.

Was this the work of monsters? But we hadn’t triggered any magic circles.

Had I been flagged for hacking? There was no way! I wasn’t even doing anything now.

And then, right in front of me, Sora’s body snapped in two.

My shoulders jumped.

“How…”

I didn’t want to finish my sentence.

The vermilion wraps around Sora started fluttering in the wind. They stretched up from the ground to the sky like a viper getting ready to bite.

Except there wasn’t any wind here.

I couldn’t move, I could only watch.

Sora’s body was trembling.

Was he in pain? It looked like he was desperately trying to endure being torn apart.

But I couldn’t get any closer to him.

Suddenly, Sora screamed.

It was such a terrible sound that I felt like my body was being turned inside out.

Hearing him scream made me want to start screaming, too. But I bit down on my tongue to hold back that urge.

A blueish-black line appeared on Sora’s cheek.

And a moment later, it glowed a venomous green, flashing on and off like a heartbeat.

I feared the light from that crack was going to tear Sora apart.

“……et a……”

“Huh?”

Sora fought to open his mouth and speak.

I heard his voice.

“Get a…”

“What?”

Sora grabbed at his own body, but only with his left hand.

His right hand was hanging limply by his side.

His shoulders had turned to stone, too, and that green light was pulsing throughout his body, shaped like some sort of letters or runes.

“……Away!!”

Accompanying his scream, a screeching howl echoed out. It sounded like a busted megaphone blaring static.

I felt the pressure in my temples, like something was trying to reach in and pull out my brain.

I gritted my teeth and wrenched my eyes shut.

Then, all at once, the sound cut off.

Or maybe it was just muffled, but in the moment, I didn’t care either way.

I slowly opened my eyes and looked up.

And all I found was a perfectly ordinary field.

Again.

Yet again, I seemed to have lost him.

Just like last time.

We can’t always get the things we want. The world just isn’t that kind.

The sound of birds chirping rang in my ears.

And I just listened to the sound as it played over and over again.

SE:1000

Alph sighed heavily as she minimized her chat log.

“I’m sure she read the message, but she’s not responding.”

She wore a hat that split into two long ends like bunny ears. Her outfit was dyed in milk whites and lovely light pinks, and the ensemble seemed to almost defy gravity, flowing perfectly with her movements.

“Why won’t she respond?”

Alph sighed again.

Mixed in with her girly outfit that looked like a strawberry milkshake, her glasses stood out. She repeatedly had to push the large circular frames back into place as they slid down her nose.

“Maybe she’s just AFK?”

“But she’s always replied before. Always.”

Alph pouted, and the PC beside her folded his arms, giving the matter some thought.

Dressed in a knight’s armor, shining brilliantly in silver and white, with a lightning design painted into the metal. The armor covered his entire body, and left his face as the only part of his body that could be seen.

With clear eyes and dirty blonde hair, he had an elegant and beautiful profile.

Only his weapon stood out in his design, a dangerous looking greatsword that was as long as his leg.

“You’re right, this is troubling.” The Blademaster Sieg furrowed his brow. “And I was looking forward to meeting her.”

“I was really hoping to introduce her to you, too. She’s really a good girl.” Alph’s expression clouded with remorse. “Though she has been acting strange lately.”

“Strange enough to ignore an invite?”

“No.”

Alph looked like she was about to cry.

“She wasn’t like this the first time you met her, was she?”

“Of course not!”

At Sieg’s question, Alph quickly shook the depression from her mind.

“We met on a beginner’s forum and realized that we had started playing on the same day – it was so much fun! Then we found out we actually lived close to each other- oh! This is just between you and me, but…”

Alph took a breath before continuing.

This actually wasn’t the first time that Sieg had heard about Alph’s encounter with the PC named Carl, but he leaned in close as if curious anyways.

“We used to form parties and enter events together.”

Then while listening, Sieg went to use a fairy orb to locate the monsters and accidentally clicked on the sprite ocarina instead – warping both of them all the way back to the dungeon’s entrance. Realizing what he had done made him want to cry right there.

He had obtained a Golden Grunty, but he’d traded it away almost immediately, thinking it wouldn’t be of much use.

What Alph remembered about Carl was irrelevant anyways because she was no beginner anymore. She would have changed since then, but those early memories still had meaning and value to Alph.

“How long has it been since you last saw her.

“That’s…”

Seeing Alph stiffen and stumble over her words, Sieg decided to change the question.

“Why did you and she stop meeting?”

“When I first started playing The World, I thought it would be fun to meet a lot of different people, and that would be the most important thing. But Carl didn’t agree. She wanted to travel around, seeing different kinds of areas in all the different servers.”

“Right, but that’s how things are here.”

Sieg nodded.

The World was a big place. There were many different ways in which players could enjoy it.

You could conquer every floor of a huge dungeon, try your hand at time trials, or trade and collect various items. It was easy to customize your own unique experience here.

CC Corp. (Cyber Connect Corporation) even held monthly events that attracted a large number of participants every time.

Some players were fascinated by new events and the rare items they could get from them, while others just liked to keep track of things on the BBS without actually participating themselves. Even beyond that, there were plenty of people who just logged in to meet and talk with their friends.

There were no right or wrong ways to have fun. All that mattered was if the person in question was satisfied.

From what Sieg could tell, Alph was a stereotypical people-pleaser.

It seemed she was trying to get to know as many people as she could, both in-game and on the boards.

In fact, Sieg himself had only met with Alph after she sent him a fan letter.

There were always new challenges to participate in within The World.

Whether it was trying to reach the bottom of a dungeon first or killing the most monsters, people would compete to get their names on the leaderboards.

And Sieg was a regular participant in those challenges.

If the events were held on a global scale, there could be thousands of participants, but even when they were only held on local severs, there would be hundreds of players trying their best.

So, making it into the top 10 for those events was no small feat.

It wasn’t easy to accomplish, but at the same time, there were always the same few people that came out on top almost every time.

And those people became objects of admiration like real life idols.

Currently, the most famous person of that rank was Balmung of the Azure Sky.

Balmung participated in every event, and always won first prize. It was even rumored that CC Corp. had e-mailed the player asking him to stop participating so much because they’ve been winning too often.

Sieg had yet to take that top spot, but he had been able to finish top 10 in almost every event he had participated in.

And because of that, Alph had written Sieg a fan letter on the BBS, which had been the first such letter he had ever received from a stranger.

Everyone knows the name that takes first place, but those that rank lower were usually forgotten about.

That said, there would still be a select few who were devoted to the second or third place winners.

Dear Sieg,

My name is Alph.

I’m not sure if this is the best place to post this, but congratulations on placing third in yesterday’s ‘Statue of the God of Time’ time attack trial.

I really thought you were going to win this time, so I was disappointed when you didn’t.

Damn you Balmung! You’re too strong!

(That’s a joke, of course. Just a joke. I apologize to Balmung and his fans.)

I will continue to support you, Sieg. So please keep up the good work.

It had obviously been written by a girl – or at least it was written to look like it was from a girl, and it was dripping with passion.

And at the end, she had signed it with her member address. Usually, people would avoid putting that kind of information on the BBS where anyone could find it.

But when Sieg saw it, he was quick to write her a short ‘thank you’ message.

The fact that they had shared their member address proved they weren’t trolling, but it also meant they were probably a new player who didn’t know any better.

Her reply came less than two hours later.

After that, the exchange shifted to e-mail, and it became clear that while the other party was expressing genuine affection, they weren’t quite familiar with proper online etiquette.

So, when Sieg then discovered that Alph was actually 12 years old, he couldn’t help but feel a little bit disappointed. However, he still decided to accept her as a younger friend.

It was embarrassing for Sieg to have someone look at him with so much adoration and reverence, but it wasn’t unpleasant.

And recently, they had even started sharing details about their real lives with one another.

“Everyone has their own way of playing the game, so it can’t be helped.”

Sieg tried his best to console Alph.

“But…”

“If she doesn’t want you to see her, then that’s her choice to make.”

“I know that, but…”

Alph couldn’t bring herself to accept Sieg’s logic.

“What is it? What’s the problem?”

Sieg made Alph meet his gaze.

Alph practically worshipped Sieg, so it was strange that she was being so stubborn about this now.

“She……” Alph forced the words out. “I think she might be doing some really bad things.”

“Bad?” Sieg repeated the vague term.

Alph’s shoulders hunched as if she were confessing her own crimes.

“Like hacking… and PKing.”

Sieg frowned unconsciously.

Now, Sieg knew he was an optimistic person, and he believed in the inherent goodness of other people. Especially if that other person happened to be a girl.

So, it was hard for him to say no when someone asked him for help. And because of that, people often asked for his advice or assistance.

His soft-spoken and polite mannerisms usually gave people a good impression of him, and he was a skilled player besides. He had yet to let down anyone that had chosen to rely on him.

But there were also some people in The World that looked at Sieg with jealousy for that very same reason.

Someone had once told him to his face that he just wanted to be popular, and thought that since he couldn’t win in the events, he was trying to gain that popularity in other ways.

But that really wasn’t what it was about for Sieg.

Aside from his closest friends, Sieg had never revealed his true ambitions to anyone.

――That one day, he wanted to surpass Balmung and Orca.

But he had to do it fair and square, working within the parameters of the game, using his own experience and skills.

The reason he was kind to girls was just because that was who he was.

Though it had also caused a number of misunderstandings for him that could only be described as a ‘lover’s quarrel’.

Girls who mistook Sieg’s kindness towards them as romantic gestures would write posts that slandered their supposed rivals on the boards. There was even one who had asked for another to be PKed.

If not for the real world distance between them, he would have been worried about things becoming even more serious. But since it was online, he could let it slide a bit more.

But for serious players, it could still cause a lot of chaos.

Thankfully however, one of Sieg’s strengths was that he did not run away from his problems.

He kept talking to those involved until they settled down. Even if they screamed insults and profanities at each other, he stood firm.

The misunderstanding usually persisted, however. It was difficult to change someone’s first impression.

And a large part of the blame lied in the appearance that Sieg had built for himself as the nobleman of steel.

But outside of those misunderstandings, it was rare that anyone had anything truly bad to say about him.

And because of that, Sieg didn’t change how he behaved. Some might call him immature, but that was how he was.

So, he wanted to talk to Alph’s friend properly, even if it cut into his personal time enjoying The World.

Sieg didn’t think it was enough to just participate in events. He wanted to help as many people as he could, too. That was just the kind of guy he was.

So, the girls who said ‘That’s not what I heard. Sieg is just a nice guy.’ Or ‘I can’t tell my boyfriend about this, but if it’s Sieg…’ continued to gather around him.

However, that wasn’t to say that he would always put his best foot forward just because a girl asked him to.

Sieg’s motto was ‘do what you can – but only if you can’.

And for him, that meant listening to each girl’s grievances as long as he had the time to do so. Anything more was just out of Sieg’s control.

And right now, Alph was clearly about to ask Sieg to do something that was out of his control.

“That’s a tough one.”

Still, Sieg didn’t have it in him to discourage this girl.

But when she asked what he thought she should do, he honestly didn’t know what to say.

“Look, it’s just that…”

He gave a troubled sigh.

“That’s why I want you to meet her, Sieg. I’m sure if Carl met you, she would be thrilled.”

He felt like Alph was probably reading too much into it, but Sieg couldn’t bring himself to actually tell her that.

“Then she wouldn’t have time to do bad things.”

“I’m not so sure about that.”

“Why not? You’re amazing, Sieg!”

Alph frowned in frustration. She innocently believed that since she thought it was a good idea, he should see it as a good plan as well.

“Well anyways, that’s beside the point.” Sieg shrugged and chuckled to himself. “I’m sure you’re doing this for a good reason, after all.”

“Huh?”

“That’s just how you are.”

Hearing that, Alph’s expression grew serious. “I think she must just feel lonely. So, she’s doing bad things so someone will scold her.”

“How old is she?”

“She’s one year younger than me.”

“A fifth grader, huh? This could be tricky.”

Sieg stretched his back, assuming a more thoughtful posture.

“I wonder if I should ask KYO and Yuki-chin.”

They were two female players who he had known longer than Alph.

They were older than Alph, and by extension older than Carl. However, he figured they would be able to give better advice than Sieg could as a guy, who was stuck just guessing at what Carl’s motives really were.

“Oh…”

But then Sieg paused and reconsidered.

If he wanted to learn more about the psychology of elementary school girls, he wasn’t limited to the resources he could find in The World. In fact, someone with no experience of online games could potentially give even better insight on the matter.

Sieg thought of his classmates in real life.

There was a girl he’d been sitting next to for the last month, but hadn’t spoken to much.

At first, Sieg had assumed she was trying to avoid talking to him at all.

Even in real life, he knew that some people saw him as a bit of an eccentric.

He had received more than his fair share of Valentine’s Day gifts and chocolates, while other guys only got one or two each year. Though it wasn’t as if he had any direct control over something like that.

However, it wasn’t like this girl had refused to talk at all. When she was asked a question, she would make eye contact and respond. She didn’t look at others like pests, she was just an honest person that treated everybody the same way.

Sieg wondered if he should try to talk to her about this matter.

“What time is it again?”

“Huh?”

Confused by his sudden off-topic question, Sieg quickly apologized.

It was still a decent hour of the day; he should be able to make a phone call without issue.

Sieg tried to think of what he would say to her, but before that, she had to at least answer his call.

Sieg – or rather – Tomonari Kasumi opened up the phonebook and looked up the phone number for Mai Minase.

ME:1020

I stared at Sora’s back while he walked in front of me.

The alpine field around us reminded me of places like Tibet or Nepal.

Steep mountains stretched out around us, and clouds rolled by like a sheet.

The ground was composed of dry soil, sand, and gravel while dust filled the air.

I breathe in the phantom winds, and I imagine the scent tickling the back of my nose.

Sora was limping again this time, and it seemed even worse than it had been before. On top of that, he sometimes held his shoulder like it was injured.

Except you couldn’t be injured in The World. Pain wasn’t something you could really experience here.

It was probably just an elaborate act. Maybe he was meticulously putting on this show in an attempt to make me believe it.

I couldn’t even try to do something like that myself, but assuming someone were to rewrite the game’s code enough, it should be possible to recreate those movements.

And yet, as I watched Sora walking around like that with his arms dangling limply, I felt something I couldn’t explain.

I wanted to shake him and tell him to cut the act. But at the same time, I wanted to take his hand and try to console him.

But still…

You can’t feel this world. It’s not just pain that doesn’t exist here, its smells and tastes, too. You can’t sense any part of it.

Which meant you couldn’t feel warmth or comfort, either.

Though I had to wonder – if I could feel those sensations – would Sora’s strange, stone-like arms be warm or cold?

“What should we do doo~doo~?”

Sora turned around.

“Doo~doo~ don’t care.”

I did my best to act nonchalant, but really, I was just happy that Sora was acknowledging me.

“Es tu copying me?”

“Non, you’re just rubbing off on me.”

“Oh-ho~…?”

Sora tilted his head in a way that made him look surprisingly childish and somehow vulnerable.

But I pretended not to notice.

“I don’t like that habit of yours, but apparently, it’s contagious.”

“Well then, pardon moi.”

Sora shrugged with exaggerated movements and held up his hands. But the motions were still stiff.

And again, I pretended not to see it.

“I’m not kidding.”

I’d started talking more like Sora, recently. Adding random doo~doo~’s to my sentences and the like.

I absolutely hated this stupid way of talking, even when I was the one using it.

“Then let me officially welcome you to the ranks of us idiots, ka-ching.”

But he just smiled and laughed at me for it.

Yet for some reason I ended up laughing along with him and staring at Sora’s profile for a moment.

There was a question that was bubbling up inside me.

A question I desperately wanted to know the answer to.

Why had he given me a fake member address?

He’d said he wanted to be friends, but apparently that was a lie.

But I didn’t think I’d ever be able to bring myself to ask him. Actually, I was sure of it.

I had already tried sending Sora a bunch of messages using the member address he gave me, but every time, it got sent back to me with an error saying it couldn’t find the proper recipient.

I tried every fix I could think of, thinking there might be a simple typo – like a O switched with a 0, 2 with a Z, or 1 with an I, then it would make sense. But none of the combinations I tried worked.

So, I gave up trying to contact Sora.

Instead, I just got better at tracking down where to find him.

In the area generation system for The World, you can find your way to all kinds of fields with different monsters or events just by combining three words.

And I discovered that Sora seemed to like using the words ‘Betrayal’ and ‘Empty’.

All of the areas I managed to find him in were ones that used one or both of those keywords.

And every time he showed up in one, he always acted like he had found me first.

“You’re late, ping~pong~!”

“We hadn’t planned a meetup, ding~dong~.”

Every time I talked like that, I covered my mouth and Sora grinned wider.

As soon as he realized how much I hated it, he started talking like that even more frequently.

If a boy in my class had done this to me, I would have ignored him by opening my textbooks or going to the library.

Honestly, even Sora was close to crossing the line.

But I could never convince myself to walk away from him.

Because with Sora, even his sarcasm and teasing made me feel special somehow.

So why did I still feel trapped?

I couldn’t think about that now though. Not when I couldn’t guess what might happen next.

I didn’t want to wait.

I didn’t want to go a day without seeing Sora anymore. Yet even when I did get to see him, it wasn’t enough to satisfy me.

Because I knew it wouldn’t last.

We could see each other like this for now, but someday, Sora was going to get bored of me.

It wasn’t that I thought he’d come to hate me; eventually, he would just lose interest in me and leave.

Even now, it wasn’t like Sora was meeting up with me because he liked me. It was just a way for him to pass the time.

Already, he was so fickle that one day we could talk for an hour, but the next day he would disappear after just a few minutes.

And it was never that I had upset him, or he had something else to do.

He would just vanish at the drop of a hat, then reappear the next day and not explain himself.

How much time does he spend playing each day? What time does he usually log in?

I’ve wanted to ask him those questions so many times, but could never bring myself to voice them.

Because if we started talking about things related to real life, I was afraid that this version of Sora would disappear.

What was his real name? How old was he? Where did he live?

Even though I wanted to know about the real Sora, I felt like the Sora in front of me should be enough.

So, I didn’t want us to know each other’s birthday or addresses or anything like that.

What kind of person was he? What was really going on in Sora’s head? Those were the things I wanted to know.

“Liar.”

I cursed at Sora under my breath.

“Moi?”

“Basho’s disciple. It’s spelt with different Kanji than your name.”

In the member address he’d given me, his name was spelt with the character for ‘suffering’. I’d memorized the motions for writing it down. But when I looked up Basho’s disciple, his name had been spelt with the character for ‘great’.

“Bingo!”

I was hoping to burst his bubble by catching his fib, but he wasn’t even fazed.

“Then why?”

“Because it looks cooler that way.”

“Now you’re just spouting nonsense.”

Sora never reacts the way I expect him to.

Every time I think I’ve caught him in one of his lies, he just complimented me like he had planned it that way from the start.

I stayed quiet for a moment, and Sora turned to look at me. I hadn’t expected that either.

“Goblins. Want to go hunting?”

“We’re way too strong to be taking on such low-level monsters.”

“Then, want to go PKing?”

He was always suggesting things like that.

“PK who, exactly? Somebody you know?”

“Non, non. It can be anybody.”

“That’s cruel!”

“Oh-ho~! And you’re such a good girlie, are you?”

Sora was trying to bait me.

But I wasn’t about to fall for such a simple ploy. I could at least ignore that much.

“How many? Just how many people have you killed?”

“Hmm… don’t remember!”

“Seriously? You’re horrible!”

He was almost certainly telling the truth. Sora has killed more players than he can even recall.

“Is it fun for you?”

So, I decided to ask.

“PKing? Non, pas vraiment.”

That answer I had expected.

Sora was free.

I wanted to ask if he was having fun, but I knew the answer would be the same.

“Tick~tock~, you in or not?”

“There’s not even anyone else here! Am I supposed to kill you? Do you want to die?”

“Non, non, of course not.”

“Bien, because I’m not going to kill you.”

Sora backed down easily.

“Has it ever happened to you before? Getting PKed?”

“Why do you ask?”

Sora’s voice suddenly lost its pep, and he met my gaze directly.

The look he gave me cut right to my core. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end.

“……Just felt like it.”

“Do I have to answer honestly? Or can I lie, beep~bop~?”

“I’d prefer the truth.”

“Well, that’s irritating, boo~boo~. If you’re going to lecture me, can you get it over with quickly? The shorter the better.”

Sora’s smirk slowly returned.

And I took a deep breath.

“That……that’s not-!”

“Hmm?”

Sora just turned his back on me. He didn’t even bother waiting for me to finish my thought. There was no point listening to my excuses.

“You know what!?”

I ran after Sora, but he wouldn’t look at me anymore.

“I was PKed less than a week after I started playing. I had agreed to form a party with some other PCs, and we set a time and place to meet. But when I got there, somebody else entirely was waiting for me instead of the people that we had promised to meet there. I’m not trying to patronize you here.”

The words just started spilling out of me on their own.

I realized that what I was saying was stupid – that I was just dragging things up that were better left buried.

Nobody needed to hear my sob story.

“Which means… it was all a set up from the start.”

“Huh?”

“It was all planned right from the start. They had to have been in on it! Only an idiot would think otherwise.”

Sora just nodded along as I ranted. He didn’t seem to think any of this mattered.

The stiffness in my shoulders eventually faded away.

“The acted friendly. They helped me when I was alone.”

“Nice people like that don’t actually exist.”

“You think so?”

“Of course. It’s obvious.”

Sora nodded casually.

“Well, that’s too bad.”

“Why? It was my own fault, after all.”

“Non, non. That’s not what I meant.”

I don’t know how to describe the sense of vulnerability I felt looking at the screen in that moment.

I felt so angry. I even thought that I wanted to die for a second.

But all of that vanished in the next instant. It was like they just got wiped from my mind. And all of a sudden, I realized I couldn’t even remember what jobs they all used.

I still felt the fatigue in my body, however. My senses had dulled, and everything felt far away. I would never be able to escape that feeling – no matter how high I raised my level. It was like I was trapped in the back of my own mind behind a thick layer of sludge, and every time something happened, it just grew thicker around me.

“It feels like I’m stuck this way. Always being disappointed.”

“So, in short,” Sora looked up at the sky. “You just hate that you were made a fool of.”

“Maybe.”

“If you want to get revenge, I could help with that.”

“PKK?”

PKs were Player Killers, so if you killed one of them, that made you a PKK. And if a PK killed a PKK, that would be a PKKK.

“Non, non. You’re thinking too small. You need to aim higher. And farther.”

“What do you mean ‘farther’?”

“Secret tee~hee~.”

Sora just grinned at me, obviously thinking himself terribly clever.

“What a boring reaction. You’ll never get farther like that.”

“So basically, as expected?”

“More or less.”

Sora sounded disappointed and let his shoulders drop.

Then I went crazy and started laughing.

“I feel like such an idiot.”

“Not ‘like’ one. You are an idiot.”

“I think just getting revenge would be too easy for you, Sora.”

That was the first time I had said his name out loud. I wonder if he noticed.

“Why don’t we go to the Cathedral?”

I didn’t want him to realize that it had been the first time, so I moved the conversation along quickly.

“Why?”

“Just because.”

“Because it’s the place we first met?”

“Ah…”

I was at a loss for words. He remembered. Sora remembered our first meeting, too.

“Because it’s a safe place.”

“I hate that place.”

“But you were there.”

“I hate it there. I really hate it.”

He sounded so childish saying it like that.

I wanted to laugh it off, but I couldn’t.

Because he wasn’t joking around this time. He was really, truly disgusted. That was a side of him I’d never seen before.

The air around Sora started to shimmer like in a heatwave.

“Hey…”

My voice caught in my throat.

Sora’s face had lost all form of expression. All signs of the player had disappeared and left only a vacant husk behind.

The outline of his character started to distort. Red and blue cross-sections separated and flickered like a 3D image.

A hook-shaped pattern appeared on his body.

Here we go again.

It was time to say goodbye for now.

“Wait……no, stop! Sora, don’t go!”

I screamed for him.

The sound of shattering glass echoed all around me.

Light flooded my vision and pain radiated through my head behind my eyes.

“Don’t…!”

He was going to disappear before I could reach him.

Just this once, I reached out for Sora.

If I could reach him just this once, that would be enough.

There was something―― I took hold of something.

And that something took hold of me.

Finally, colors and shapes took form within the light.

“Sora……!”

I listened carefully, holding my breath as I tried to look beyond that light.

And there was Sora, on his knees, hunched over, with his shoulders shaking like he was crying.

A strange haze was covering Sora’s body.

And it took the shape of a person.

That white shadow moved gently, wrapping around Sora.

I looked up from there, and finally saw her.

She looked barely five years old, but she was so beautiful that she also seemed like she was almost fully grown.

Her entire body was painted in shades too pure to be called white or silver. Her skin was as flawless as a porcelain doll.

Her eyes carried a lovely innocence, yet also strength. Just like her hair, her pupils had no color in them whatsoever.

But the thing that caught my attention was her smile. It was a very natural smile – almost angelic – and made her look more like she was a real person instead of some apparition.

Soft light radiated from her entire body, making her look pearlescent.

A sleeveless, robe-like dress completely covered the girl’s body from her neck to her toes. But the fabric was thin and had a silk-like sheen to it, so it revealed the slender outline of her body underneath it.

As the hem of her dress rustled, I caught a glimpse of her toes below and felt my heartbeat quicken.

Quicken with fear, that is.

“Who are you? Get away from Sora!”

Was she some kind of NPC? A random character created by the system?

If she was, that would mean I was doing something very stupid by shouting at her.

But if I did nothing, then she wouldn’t react to me at all.

I started wondering if I should have brought better equipment.

The girl made a shrill sound like a pigeon.

It took me a few seconds to realize that I was also smiling.

The moment I heard that voice, my body froze.

She had such a clear, innocent voice…… it was like the voice of a devil.

“Ah……”

Sora started mumbling something.

And when I heard his voice, I finally understood what was happening.

This was not some event.

Sora was actually in pain.

He was suffering.

“Get away from him!”

The words spilled out of my mouth. I screamed at her to leave.

And then the girl turned to look at me.

Her eyebrows were so pale I could barely make them out against her skin.

Was that a look of confusion? Was she trying to say something? To deny me? Scorn me? Mock me?

Sora was suffering. He was suffering right in front of me.

But his moaning cut off abruptly. At that moment, his body jumped and started convulsing.

“Sora!”

The girl floated gently in the air.

As if she had actually understood my words.

She parted her lips to speak.

“…………”

But her voice didn’t reach my ears.

It couldn’t, because Sora’s screams were drowning out everything else.

The girl moved.

She looked at me with a confused and frightened expression.

And something in me snapped.

RE:1010

Takie jumped out of the bathtub when she heard a scream coming from upstairs. Quickly, she wrapped herself in a towel and ran into Junka’s room.

“What’s wrong?”

And there, wearing what looked like an exaggerated pair of goggles, Junka sat slumped in her chair.

“Jun dear! Jun dear!”

Takie shook her granddaughter’s shoulders, then pulled her FMD off her head and tossed it aside like a piece of trash.

“What’s wrong? Hang on!”

Takie looked into Junka’s eyes, and finally, she blinked. Until then, she had just been staring into space without moving a muscle.

“……uh…”

Junka slowly focused on Takie in front of her.

“You were screaming; what happened to you, Jun dear?”

Junka looked over at the FMD lying on the floor. The blood had drained from her lips.

“The boss showed up. I got killed in a bad spot.”

The smile she gave was painful.

“Boss?”

“A really strong monster. I did my best, but it wasn’t enough.”

“That’s all?”

Takie relaxed her shoulders in relief. She was comforted, but not all of her doubts were alleviated.

“But you screamed so loudly, could a game really be that intense?”

When her daughter had bought this PC for her granddaughter, Takie had been a little concerned.

She thought it might be a bit much for an elementary school student to have.

But Kyoko had laughed off the issue.

“They teach web design in elementary school these days.”

It was something they would buy eventually anyways, so there was no reason not to do it now. That was how Kyoko saw it.

“But still, there are some things that shouldn’t be seen by children.”

“Perhaps. But that’s for Junka to decide.”

“You want your daughter to be able to look up pornographic and explicit images?”

“Oh, please. Junka is smarter than that, she has her own set of morals.”

The more important thing to realize when connecting to the internet was that knowledge was only the first layer of it. It was also an opportunity to discover new things for yourself.

Rather than trying to limit the amount of damage it could cause, people should be allowed to expose themselves to that turbid content, and try to not be tainted by it. That was what Kyoko wanted for her daughter.

That was how she had decided to raise her.

Takie did consider Junka to be mature and trustworthy for her age, but she still felt that Kyoko was too brazen with how she handled things.

One hour a day on the computer for gaming and one hour for schoolwork. Or two hours to study word processing and calculating software. In total, she didn’t want Junka spending more than two hours a day on the computer.

These were the limitations that Takie had set with Junka.

“But I won’t be watching every little move you make. This is a promise, and I’m trusting that you’ll keep it.”

When left to her own devices, Junka had proved that she could be quite independent. Takie knew her granddaughter well, after all.

But when she looked at the Junka in front of her now, Takie felt doubt.

Would she really get so upset over a simple game?

Upset enough to let out a soul-curdling scream that drained the blood from her face? Takie couldn’t stop herself from shaking at the thought of it.

“How long have you been playing?”

“It hasn’t even been an hour yet.”

“Then…”

For a moment, Takie recalled a time the news once talked about a young man who had died after playing a game for two or three days without sleep.

“We have a promise, don’t we, Grandma? I’ve kept my promise.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Man, now I’ll have to start over again.”

Junka picked up her FMD. “I’ll save for now and call it a day.”

“Yes. That’s sounds like a good idea.”

Junka put the FMD on again to save her data.

But her hand trembled as she took hold of the controller again.

A shaky breath escaped Junka’s lips.

And Takie noticed something fall down her cheeks.

“Jun, dear?”

Junka was crying, her shoulders started shaking violently with each sob. She took her FMD back off again and wiped her tears.

“I’m such an idiot, I…”

“What’s wrong?”

As Takie repeated her earlier question, Junka twisted her face into a smile.

“I feel like such an idiot for getting so caught up in a game.” Takie handed Junka a tissue. “It’s all fake, but I still get so drawn into it. Why is that?”

Junka laughed at herself through her tears.

And unsure what else to do, Takie held Junka tightly in an embrace.

When Kyoko came home after 2 a.m., Takie informed her of the incident.

“I’ve been concerned about this from the very start, of course. But what do you make of it?”

“Hmm… isn’t it fine?”

Kyoko took a bite of a pickle from her plate.

Takie frowned and opened her mouth to chastise her, but stopped short.

Although a parent would always see their child as a child, Takie had to remind herself that the person in front of her was an adult. Chastising her would not accomplish anything. Instead, Takie placed a beer bottle and a glass in front of Kyoko.

She poured herself a glass, and then downed half of it in one go.

Kyoko always smelled of chemicals even after taking a bath.

Her job must have been hard work, considering all the hours she put in, but Kyoko had never complained about it to her family. She might yell that management was too inflexible sometimes, but she would always be over it by the next day.

And the occasional phone calls from her co-workers proved that she was seen as reliable to some extent. It seemed they even referred to her as ‘Big Sis’ there.

Takie looked at the woman sitting opposite of her while holding one knee under her chin.

In the Nimura family, Takie played the role of the mother while Kyoko played the role of the father. There were no men to fill that role here – not since Takie’s husband passed away.

But she had never once felt inconvenienced by that fact before.

“I thought Junka was a child like you used to be – one who would never cry.”

Takie topped off Kyoko’s glass.

Junka had always been a quiet child, after all. She rarely had fits of anger or cried. She’d been known as a good listener since preschool, and her teachers were always complimenting how easy it was to take care of her.

Kyoko responded while chewing on a pickle.

“I was just stubborn. Seemed better than being emotional all the time.”

“You shouldn’t put it like that.”

“I’m not trying to be dismissive. This is important to me, too.”

“I don’t understand the way you do things.”

Kyoko wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so she just laughed, trying to act coy.

Takie reached for a pickle as well.

Junka would have scowled from the smell alone, so they could only have pickles at times like these. If they so much as left them out in the fridge, she would refuse to touch anything, claiming the smell had soaked into everything.

“I wonder what it’s like to be so obsessed with something like a game.”

“Well, even I cried when I read Anne of Green Gables.

“You can’t compare a book to a game. They’re completely different forms of media, so don’t talk like they’re the same thing.” Takie gave a heavy sigh. “I wonder if it’s Mr. T’s blood in her.”

“Mr. T, huh? It’s been a while since you wanted to talk about him.”

Kyoko grinned smugly as she took another drink of her beer.

“You haven’t talked to him recently, have you?”

“Nope. Why are you bringing this up now?”

“So cruel.”

“Who is? Mr. T?”

“Both of you, obviously.”

Takie glared at Kyoko for a moment.

That was a code word for Junka’s father. Kyoko didn’t want to use his real name around the house, so they called him ‘Mr. T’ instead. Before long, it had just become another quirk of the Nimura family.

“I wish we hadn’t been so thorough about all this.”

“We were kind of cold-blooded, weren’t we?”

Takie’s shoulder slumped.

A parent would always see their child as a child, but they wouldn’t always act like one.

For Takie, Kyoko had a personality that she could only work with because they were mother and daughter, but it was still difficult for her to tell what she was thinking sometimes.

And Mr. T was a prime example of that.

What had she been thinking when she got together with him? And what had she been thinking when they broke up?

Kyoko had said the marriage was strained, but it hadn’t been like they were really having problems – personal, financial, or otherwise – that would have caused them to split up. They had separated almost too easily, leaving everybody around them clueless as to what was really going on.

But as Kyoko had said, she was very stubborn, and once she had made a decision, she never second guessed herself.

“But times are hard on us, now. Thanks in no small part to Mr. T.”

Takie stared up at the ceiling.

“What are you talking about? What does it matter if we’re on hard times?” Kyoko hardened her voice. “You’re not about to suggest that I should get back together with him after all this time, are you?”

“I’d considered it.”

“Well forget it. What would that even accomplish? You really think we’d be happier like that?”

Takie shrugged and gave an exaggerated sigh. “You can spare me the lecture; I already know that.”

“For Junka, this is her reality. There’s no point worrying about hypothetical scenarios and what we could have done differently at this point.

“I know that, but-”

Takie had to stop herself from pushing the issue any further.

Kyoko was right, after all. Thinking in terms of ‘what if’ or ‘if only’ was a dangerous mindset, especially since they distracted from the heart of the real issue.

Ordinarily, Takie never would have brought up an idea like that in the first place.

But Kyoko hadn’t seen that look on Junka’s face, so Takie felt that she couldn’t understand just how dire the situation really was.

If she had seen Junka’s face as she had cried her eyes out – she would have considered it, too.

However, as things stood now, even Takie herself had no idea what to think or how to proceed.

This was a blind spot for them. Or at least that was what Takie thought. Some things were easier to see depending on if you were looking up at it or down. The child could sometimes notice things the parent could not.

Kyoko glanced at the clock on the wall. It was already close to three o’ clock.

“I agree that these are hard times, but we’ve always weathered our challenges before.”

“I suppose.”

Takie nodded, so Kyoko took her empty glass and beer bottle and stood up to put them in the sink.

“I’m going to bed.”

“Goodnight.”

Takie listened as Kyoko walked up the stairs. Once she heard the door to her bedroom close, Takie finally stood as well.

And somewhere outside, she heard the sound of an ambulance siren in the distance.

ME:1021

Before me stood a girl staring at me with a look of confusion.

And inside me, something snapped.

The girl’s beautiful, innocent façade was what sparked my anger. I wanted to ruin her. To beat her and kick dirt on her until she wasn’t so damn perfect.

I think this kind of feeling was known as ‘sadism’.

It would seem I have an appetite for inflicting harm onto others.

I held up my axe, its twisted blade gleaming in the light.

But she didn’t even look up at it.

Because it’s not me that she’s scared of. It’s something else. Something that’s not me.

I would fix that soon enough.

I could feel a shiver run up my spine, and my temples suddenly felt hot.

I raised my axe up, holding the weightless weapon high over my head

And finally, the girl’s expression changed.

At long last, she seemed to understand what I thought of her.

“Die!”

I spat out the simplest and most powerful curse I could think to say.

“Die, die, die, die!”

It’s not a word I’ve ever said out loud before. At worst, I would just mutter it under my breath.

I swung my axe down with pure, unadulterated hostility and malice.

But as soon as I did, my body locked up. I couldn’t move.

Or to be precise, my body stopped working. The character in the game wasn’t responding to the input from my controller.

I pressed down on the buttons hard enough for my knuckles to turn white and spun the joysticks around in every direction.

But ‘Carl’ would not budge.

“What is this!?” At the sound of my voice, the girl flinched. “Are you doing this?”

“……My……”

Her voice sounded exactly as I imagined it would. Soft, gentle – and not at all pretty.

“…name is……Aura.”

She actually introduced herself. Aura.

She was telling me her name?

What, was I supposed to care?

I wasn’t going to stop. I wasn’t about to feel sorry for her.

“You fucking moron! Just die already! Die! Die! Die!”

I managed to take one shaky step forward, but when I did, I froze completely. It was like the game had been put on pause.

And yet…

She alone kept on moving in that space.

She moved away from Sora with flittering motions, dancing like confetti with less weight than a fairy.

But Sora didn’t move. He didn’t even speak. He was frozen in place so completely that he was blending in with his surroundings.

It wasn’t Sora anymore.

It was just an object in the game.

And then the girl’s outline blurred and faded away, leaving me as the only sign of life around.

“Don’t run away!”

I kept screaming at her.

I remembered her features. Her pale eyes. Hair that danced in the wind. Plump cheeks like peaches.

“I’m……sorry……”

The girl had vanished into thin air.

I was dumbfounded by just how shaken I was.

Did I really just say sorry? Me? What on earth was I apologizing for?

It took me a moment to realize that Sora had disappeared, as well.

The moaning, struggling, screaming Sora was now gone.

And I was just left standing there in a daze. I kept trying to move, but I was still frozen.

Who was she?

Who is Sora?

And me – ‘Carl’ – Who am I?

I am… Junka Nimura.

SE:2000

Orca of the Azure Sea eyed his surrounding with an air of suspicion.

His hair was copper-colored and slicked back to show his forehead, and his muscular body was dyed with green paints.

He wore heavy iron boots with a tasset around his waist, but left his thick upper body almost completely bare aside from a bulky shoulder guard on his left arm.

He was dressed to project an air of confidence in his swordsmanship and physical prowess. That was the kind of character he had designed.

“They certainly got things back up and running easily enough.”

He spoke to himself with a full, deep voice that matched his physique.

Not even eight hours ago, the BBS forums had been flooded with posts about the servers being down. Yet now he was able to access the game again as usual. It was almost as if the incident hadn’t even occurred.

But how the server had gone down and recovered had been strange.

Under normal circumstances, server outages only occurred when the host computer wasn’t able to handle a sudden influx of access channels opening up.

But this time around, there had been no sign of anything like that.

And that was what Orca was looking around for.

The fact of the matter was that Japan had the second largest player-base in The World after the United States. But the issue of congestion should have been dealt with by the recent creation of a management center and additional servers off the coast of Urayasu.

And no notable events had occurred at the time of the issue.

In short – the cause was completely unknown.

CC Corp. Had yet to release a statement on the matter, either. And that was unusual for a company whose slogan was ‘Heartfelt & Useful for All’. Their users would have appreciated a more timely and quick response.

Suddenly, the voice of an idol stated playing in Orca’s ear. It was his alerts letting him know he had received a short mail.

Cutting off the lyrics at ‘I was almost brought to tears, and now I’m late’ he opened the message in his vision.

It only said one thing: I’m on my way, I’ll be there soon. But that he bothered to send it at all showed how dedicated he was.

“‘Sorry for the inconvenience’ he means.”

His partner arrived shortly after and – as usual – got right down to business.

“Is that all?”

“That’s all.”

Balmung of the Azure Sky – Orca’s partner – nodded in confirmation.

He had silver hair with a slight blueish tint, and his eyes shone like emeralds.

He was covered from head to toe in silvery-white armor, but even with all of that on, you could tell that he was thin underneath it all. Lean even, and strong.

And lastly, sprouting from his back were two large angel-like wings. They were a rare item which he had earned for completing The One Sin event, a legendary achievement within The World.

“Which means CC Corp. doesn’t know either.”

“Right.”

For being such a large, burly man, Orca was surprisingly mild-mannered. That personality, however, made him the perfect match for the reserved and brilliant Balmung.

Together, the two of them had conquered many difficult dungeons and events without simply relying on numbers. It wasn’t only The One Sin – together, they’d overcome events like The Gate of Tortured Souls and The Red Room as well.

Still, it wasn’t as though they were always together. More often than not, they both tended to play solo.

However, because of his caring nature, Orca often took on the role of guiding new players. He’d take it upon himself to explain proper online etiquette to them.

Even players who were initially intimidated by his appearance were soon taken in by Orca’s gentleness and quickly changed their minds. He never just lectured someone, he would explain calmly what was wrong, and won them over with his ‘big brother’ personality.

Balmung however was not the kind of person who would willingly get involved with others. He had a strong sense of duty, so if he were to get involved in something, he didn’t want to do so half-heartedly. He wanted to make sure it would receive his full attention.

That was his duty as one who had braved The World since the very beginning – his ‘Noblesse Oblige’, as it were.

That said, if anyone wanted to meet Balmung, it wasn’t all that hard to find him. All you had to do was show up for the biggest events in the server, and he’d be there.

Although actually trying to compete with him was a fool’s errand. Balmung won every event he participated in.

The best one could hope for would be to come second, and see just how close to Balmung you could get.

And so, this begged the question – how did these two individuals who seemed to have nothing in common – both come to be known as Descendants of Fianna and share the title of Azure? That mystery had persisted in The World for as long as anyone could remember.

There were rumors that their origin traced its roots all the way back to the Beta version of the game – Fragment – or that there used to be a Scarlet counterpart to them, but no one knew for certain.

All that was certain was that the pair had absolute faith in one another. Yet at the same time, it seemed as though they knew very little about each other in real life. To them, the characters Orca and Balmung were their real selves.

They only ever worked together when special events cropped up that required them to work as a team.

“So, what do you think?”

“I don’t know.”

They spoke plainly with one another. There was no need for pretense where the two of them were involved.

“Then don’t waste my time.”

Orca huffed, crossing his large, burly arms over his chest as he began to stroke his chin in thought.

“I’m worried too, you know.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter either way. It all amounts to the same thing in the end.”

Balmung shrugged and cast an indifferent gaze into the distance, but Orca let it slide.

Cold stone. Strong winds.

There were a lot of prying eyes here. The players wandering the streets here were probably watching them, wondering what the two high-profile PCs were talking about.

“Lot of people here with free time.”

“Doesn’t that apply to you too, Bal.”

“No, it doesn’t.” Orca’s teasing remark was met with a firm rebuttal from Balmung. “Something strange has happened in The World recently – or is about to happen. That’s what I think.”

“What a coincidence, I was just thinking the same thing.”

“We just need a point of inspiration. Everything will fall in place from that first spark. Like how it was for the great minds of Einstein and Archimedes.”

“What, you mean like a ‘eureka!’ moment?” Orca ran a hand through his hair. “Well, in our case, we’re still waiting on that moment.”

Just where did the urban legends that you would die from playing The World come from?

Those kinds of stories always seemed to crop up around MMOs.

A girl who sees a dead classmate in a field, in uniform, claiming to know some kind of dark secret.

If you collected 10 Gold Grunties, they would combine to become Harold Hoerwick.

There is a cursed area within The World, and if you reached it with just the right combination of words from the game’s 1.2 million possible combinations, you would die after 3 days, 3 hours, 3 minutes, and 3 seconds.

However, in this instance, Balmung sensed something that made it hard to dismiss it as just another urban legend.

At the risk of being labeled as insane, he trusted his intuition.

“You should have taken Helba up on her offer.”

Orca rubbed his hands together.

“Apologies, but I don’t work with hackers.”

Balmung snapped back.

It was rumored that players of The World had fallen into a comatose state, but this had gone unconfirmed now for over three months.

Yet at the same time, there were some strange disturbances within The World.

Things that others tried to pass off as bugs in the system, like monsters that can’t be killed.

The disbanding of the Crimson Knights.

And the appearance of the hacker named Helba.

The true identity of Helba was a surprisingly well-kept secret in spite of her notoriety.

In the background for The World, Helba was the name of a dark queen written of in the Epitaph of Twilight.

The player using her name rarely logged in, but it was said she hides her eyes behind golden goggles and wears a dress dyed in sunset purple and moonlight white. It went without saying, but this was not a character design that could be replicated only using CC Corp. Specifications.

People claimed that she had existed since the time of Fragment, but no one knew who she was in real life, or even if she was really just one person or a group of people.

They were probably Japanese, but that was assumed simply because she most commonly made her appearances within the Japan servers – and yet even that information wasn’t entirely confirmed.

So much was unknown about her, yet people still spoke of how incredible she was. But incredible how, exactly? Were they just saying that she was an incredible hacker? That seemed unlikely, because even the full extent of her skills in that area were unknown. Rewriting the top page of a website, hacking into a list of firearms manufacturers, or manipulating the New York stock exchange – whether or not she could do any of these things were all a mystery.

But the biggest mysteries of all were in why she called herself Helba in the first place? And just what was she planning? Both points were equally as unknown as her true identity.

Only her name and the fact that she existed were certain.

“But it’s not every day you get a direct call from Helba.” Orca shot Balmung a sly look. “Such a waste.”

“You must be joking. Don’t tell me you’re serious about this?”

Balmung glared at Orca through his bangs.

“Of course, I’m serious. I’ll take whatever help we can get.”

“Don’t confuse the ends with the means.”

“And that’s your choice to make. Some people will get it wrong, some won’t.”

“And you think you’ll be the one to get it right? You sure do sound confident.”

“Well, I am Orca of the Azure Sea.”

Balmung met Orca’s eyes and smiled menacingly. There was a hint of sarcasm to it though, so it just barely passed as friendly.

“And I am Balmung of the Azure Sky. I don’t want to owe anyone any favors.”

“Except for me, you mean?”

“Yes, except for you.”

Balmung nodded.

However, even if he wouldn’t admit it, the fact that he wouldn’t accept Helba’s offer was still an issue for them.

Helba had secured an area in The World that had been discarded by CC Corp. and was building her own foundation there. She’d even given it the rather gloomy name of ‘Net Slum’.

He wondered if it was possible that Helba was actually somehow involved with CC Corp. If that were the case, then it truly would be foolish to have rejected her offer.

Balmung grit his teeth.

The most unbearable part of it all was not being sure if refusing her had been the right choice or not.

“Do we really know nothing at all?”

Balmung turned to Orca, his heart beating uncontrollably.

“What were you hoping for?”

“Anything.”

“Unfortunately, we have nothing.”

Orca replied with a disproportionately easygoing tone. His demeanor did not match the seriousness of the situation.

But Balmung wouldn’t let that get to him.

“I’ve been combing through the BBS over and over, but there isn’t a lot of interesting info there.”

“It’s not over yet.”

Balmung insisted.

“I’m not saying that it is.”

Orca replied while rolling his shoulders and head as if his muscles were sore.

“I wish there was a more definitive incident to start from. Just having rumors to go on makes things difficult.”

“If it gets big enough, CC Corp. should come out of the woodwork to deal with it.”

When Balmung said that, Orca looked at him with a sigh and lowered his gaze.

“Sorry, I got carried away.”

“No……”

Balmung wanted to say that he understood how Orca felt, but he suppressed those words.

If the comatose rumors were true, it meant that this was already well beyond the scope of something that any single individual playing at being a knight of justice could handle.

Even so, Orca – who felt increasingly frustrated and inadequate for not knowing what was going on or what he could do to help – was right to expect a dramatic shift in this situation.

Which meant that he was expecting someone would fall to misfortune.

Even if you died in the game, you could always restart and come back to life. Your real body wouldn’t be harmed.

In the environment of online games, pain tended to be overlooked. Not just physical pain, but mental pain as well.

But in this case, it was the victims that chose to disregard it.

Orca was ashamed of his own carelessness.

“You know, I like it here. I like the people I meet here.”

Orca sighed to himself while looking off into the distance.

Many players meet and part ways here. Sometimes they’ll get along, and sometimes they’ll have a falling out.

Adults often say that virtual friendships are meaningless. That all you can expect from them is a brief relationship before you eventually part ways again.

But was that really true?

It was true that there was a danger to that kind of faceless interaction, but was it really any different in real life?

If you don’t want to have that kind of relationship with someone online, you could easily drop contact with them.

But the people here had already made their choice. They’d all decided to be here, online.

All they could do now was keep their eyes open and keep moving.

Orca’s hope was that what lied ahead on that road would be something good.

“Hey, am I just being too naïve?”

“No……”

Balmung lowered his gaze. For some reason, he felt suddenly embarrassed.

“Are we in over our heads?”

Then Balmung looked back up.

Orca waited anxiously for his partner’s answer.

“No. This is a matter of our pride as those called the Descendants of Fianna.”

Hearing that, Orca gave a wide, genuine smile, like that of a child.

“That’s right. We are the Descendants of Fianna. So, we have to aim higher than anyone else.”

“It stinks, doesn’t it?”

Balmung joked.

“Knock that off.”

Orca chuckled and looked around him with fresh inspiration.

An unexplained server outage – the cause of which was still unknown.

They didn’t mean to play at righteousness, but if there really was something unusual going on, they wanted to deal with it as quickly as possible.

And to do so before anyone else. Though that bit was just for their own self-satisfaction.

“Should we try talking to the PCs who were online at the time?”

Balmung offered a suggestion.

“Oh, are you starting to open up a little? It’s not much, but it’s the little things that matter.”

Orca shrugged his shoulders in agreement.

Their first crucial step was deciding who to question first.

“I knew it, it’s you!”

Suddenly, another voice cut in.

SE:2001

“Sir Orca, Sir Balmung!”

A petite Wavemaster wearing round-rimmed glasses jumped up and down with excitement.

“Two swordsmen, one with wings and one with muscles. I knew who you were immediately.”

“Oh, thank you.”

Orca blinked in a fit of confusion.

“It’s nice to meet you. My name is Alph.” She bowed and introduced herself. “Sorry. I hadn’t expected to meet you both in person, so I’m a little excited!”

Alph raised a hand to her mouth.

Balmung shot a look at Orca that stressed he couldn’t handle this type of person.

But the girl called Alph may have seen through his attempt to leave Orca behind as his scapegoat, because she quickly stepped closer to Balmung instead.

“I think I owe you an apology, Sir Balmung.”

“Wha-?”

A startled noise escaped Balmung that was entirely unbecoming of a Descendant of Fianna.

“I kind of used to post some mean things about you on the event boards.”

“O-oh……”

Balmung spoke with uncertainty. When you win all the time, there will of course be those who become jealous of your achievements just as there will be those that root for you to succeed. But that much was expected, so he had never paid much attention to the gossip surrounding himself.

“You remember, don’t you?”

Alph got closer again.

“Yeah……”

With the tip of her hat just under Balmung’s nose, Alph leapt for joy.

“Hurray! That makes me so happy!”

It didn’t really matter much to him, but seeing Alph so ecstatic over it left Balmung at a loss for words.

“So again, I’m very sorry about what I’ve said.” Alph bowed deeply to Balmung, then craned her neck to look up at him from below. “Can you forgive me?”

“Uh- sure… I mean, it’s not really…”

Out of the corner of his eye, Balmung saw Orca standing there with a perfectly blank expression on his character’s face.

But he was certain that was just a façade, and behind the computer screen, he was probably laughing his ass off.

“So, um…”

Hoping to escape this situation, Balmung tried to get the conversation back under control.

“Are you two just observing today?” But Alph just continued with her own inquiries anyways. “Or were you curious, too?”

Orca raised an eyebrow.

“Curious about what?”

Orca quickly looked up what event those round-rimmed glasses came from. ‘Lightless Impenetrable Ruins’ had been where it took place. They weren’t especially useful items, so they tended to get traded around a lot to the people that liked to use them as a fashion item.

“Well, about the ghost, right?”

“Ghost…?”

Alph looked back at Orca questioningly as her repeated her own words.

“Well, ghost stories are really popular right now, aren’t they?”

“I hadn’t realized ghosts could fall in or out of style.”

Alph laughed loudly again. This time however, it sounded a bit forced.

“You’re a funny guy, Sir Orca.”

“……Well, thank you.”

“The ghost was a PC who looked like a young girl, and it’s said that players who see her are either blessed with good luck, or cursed with bad luck.”

“Right,”

They had heard the stories about her, too, of course.

Where she appeared was completely random, she could show up in a Fire Field, or she could be found in a Womb Dungeon.

But if you tried to talk to her, she wouldn’t respond to you. She just appeared and then disappeared.

It was rumored to be the prologue for a major event being planned by CC Corp., or that it was just a bug, but even the rumors themselves were tenuous at best. And that was because the sightings were few and far between, leaving little intrigue for people to get hooked onto.

Most of the sightings were probably just from people who had heard about the initial rumors.

If it were the prologue to an event, there was no way that CC Corp. would implement it in such a roundabout way. But if it were a bug, then it should have been resolved by now.

“There’s a story from just before the server outage. Do you really not know about it?”

“Really? That thing, a ghost?”

Orca questioned Alph again and looked briefly to Balmung.

And Balmung shook his head. This was the first he’d heard of it, too.

“We’ve learned she has a name. It’s Aura.”

“Latin?”

Balmung tried to participate in the conversation.

“Wow! You really know a lot, don’t you? That’s Sir Balmung for you.”

Alph applauded Balmung for his input, but he just pulled his head down between his shoulders like a turtle hiding in its shell.

“I believe it originally meant a breath, or gentle breeze, but it could also be used to mean an ill omen.”

And when he added onto his comment, Alph was so excited that she was practically jumping for joy.

“Bingo! You win a sitting cushion.”

“I- this isn’t a game show!”

Balmung was becoming increasingly frustrated. He didn’t think there were any in-game items designed as sitting cushions, but Alph’s enthusiasm made him hesitate.

“Who did you hear that name from?”

Orca asked Alph a question while realizing that his appearance really stuck out in this group.

“Well…”

“Well……”

There was a clear difference between how Alph was treating Orca and Balmung. Oddly, it felt like she was taking Orca less seriously.

“I heard about it the usual way, I guess. My friend told me about her.”

“I haven’t seen any posts about it on the forums.”

“You shouldn’t be looking for information on the forums. Nobody trusts what gets posted there.”

“Yes, well… I suppose.”

Orca faltered, and Balmung shot him a labored look.

“Did you think you could trace it all back to its roots? The information is constantly changing. it’s better to get information from the source.”

“May I ask you something?”

Balmung nervously raised his hand, hoping to use the moment to pose a question.

“Yes, of course Sir Balmung.”

“To us, your testimony is still hearsay – so who is the source?”

“It happened to a friend.”

“A friend of yours?”

“Not ‘mine’, of Alph.”

Balmung felt his temples throbbing.

“A friend of… Alph’s?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“So your saying that y- that Alph’s friend actually saw the ghost?”

Alph nodded confidently, her glasses slipping down to the tip of her nose.

“Can you tell us about this person.”

“Uh…” When Orca made that request of her, Alph’s expression seemed to darken just a bit. “I don’t really like the idea of giving out personal information to strangers.”

Orca wanted to point out that she was the one who had approached them, but held himself back. Perhaps she meant that it was her friend who didn’t know about the Descendants of Fianna.

“Oh! I have an idea!”

Suddenly, Alph clapped her hands together as she seemed to make some kind of decision.

Orca and Balmung had no way of knowing it, but they were being used by Alph.

“I’ll ask Carl to meet in person, and let you know when she responds.”

Alph was beaming with pride over her plan.

However, when she saw that she was not getting the reaction she expected, her expression slipped into curiosity.

“Is there a problem with that?”

“No……” Orca had to force himself to speak again. “It’s probably a good idea. I’ll agree to this plan. And so will Bal.”

“Right, of course.”

Balmung regained his composure and gave a stiff nod.

“Then, may I have your member addresses to get in touch?”

Alph tilted her head and giggled.

“What about us?”

Orca jabbed at Balmung with his elbow for asking that.

“As I said, I don’t like giving out personal information to strangers.”

Orca could see Balmung’s cheek start to twitch, but after a moment, he relented to hand over his member address.

“Alright, then. I’ll be in touch.”

“Thank you. It was a pleasure to meet you.”

Alph bowed and turned her back to them.

“Oh, right!”

Orca and Balmung had just relaxed when it seemed the conversation was over, but they immediately tensed back up when she spoke again.

“I spend a lot of time with Sieg.” Orca and Balmung both blinked dumbly. “So, if you really need to get in touch with me, you can ask him. You do know Sieg, don’t you?”

Orca groaned inwardly as he interpreted those words.

“I hope I can introduce you officially soon.”

Balmung could no longer run away.

“Who is Sieg?”

Alph raised an eyebrow at his question.

“You really don’t know? Are you sure?”

“……Sorry.”

Feeling pressured by Alph’s presence, Balmung couldn’t help but apologize.

“It’s alright, I was thinking that might be the case. Even still, please contact Sieg.”

After a forceful and direct reminder, Alph returned to the Root Town. Her exit had been just as abrupt and overwhelming as her entrance.

ME:1030

Sora had disappeared without a trace.

It had been five days now.

And I was starting to wonder if he had just gotten bored of playing The World.

Or if there was a chance that he was just busy in real life.

Or maybe I was always just missing him. Regardless of the reason, I couldn’t find him anywhere.

I kept pulling up my conversation logs with Sora and listening to them over and over again just because I wanted to hear his voice.

But it didn’t work.

Halfway through, I would start to feel sick. My headaches would get so bad that I’d feel like throwing up, and I’d have to stop.

In honesty, just logging in made my hands break out in a cold sweat now.

It was difficult even checking my e-mail anymore, and I felt like a damn idiot for it.

Sora’s absence or Sora’s wrath. To be honest, I wasn’t sure I knew which one I was better off with anymore.

I heard the sound of birds chirping. Another message from Alph.

I was already starting to regret having reached out to her.

Except, that wasn’t true. I had given it plenty of thought this time around.

I had considered everything to make sure I would be able to stay ahead of Alph this time.

Except, that wasn’t true either. It wasn’t really that I needed to outsmart her, I just couldn’t let her take advantage of me this time.

That was all it was, so I didn’t need to ‘outsmart’ her.

Her answer came almost immediately.

It took her less than five minutes to reply to my e-mail.

When I first got to know Alph, she had been limited to only one hour a day for gaming like I was.

But it seemed like that might no longer be the case for her.

Her response time would have been impossible unless she was actively online.

It could have just been a coincidence that we were both logged in at the same time, but that didn’t seem very likely in this instance.

Because right now in real life, it was midnight.

It seemed strange, but I headed for the weapon shop Alph had designated in Mac Anu anyways.

As I crossed the bridge, I looked around for that Wavemaster I had PKed a while back, but I didn’t see him around.

“Man, it’s been a while, hasn’t it?” Alph was as energetic as ever. “So, what’s up? Have you been well, Carl?”

“How about you?”

Alph watched me from behind her glasses. They made her eyes look even bigger than they already were, so I turned my face away like I was trying to escape her gaze.

“Alph is doing just fine.”

“Was it really alright to meet up this late?”

Alph just laughed and playfully stuck out her tongue.

“Well, it can just be our little secret. We just have to make sure our moms don’t find out.”

I remembered Alph’s mother’s face.

She had posters plastered all over town with her smiling on them. I think they had some text on them saying ‘what we can leave behind for our children’ or something like that.

“My mom hasn’t been home a lot lately.”

“Oh, right.”

I didn’t really want to think about my mom right now.

“So, um, I’m really sorry.” Alph suddenly clasped her hands in front of her face with an apology. The way she held them up made it look like she was praying to me. “Sieg couldn’t make it today, he said something about studying for an exam.”

“That’s not what this is about.”

I tried to explain, but Alph continued before I could get the rest out.

“He said he’s been getting a lot more fan mail recently. It’s amazing, he said he gets about ten messages a week now. So, I think it’s good for him to take some time off from the internet every now and then. It’s not that he doesn’t want to meet Carl or anything, I’m sure of it. So please don’t be upset. Sieg is a good person, really.”

“………Right.”

“I was so happy to get Carl’s e-mail, too. It’s such a shame; I really wanted to introduce you two.

Alph was seriously convinced that I cared about meeting this PC named Sieg and that was what I contacted her for.

“It’s fine.”

“Really?”

Alph looked into my eyes.

“I just needed to talk to Alph.”

“Me?” Alph pointed at the tip of her nose and widened her eyes even further. “How come? Why me? Mysterious.”

“Well, you seem to know a lot about people and stuff.”

There weren’t a lot of players that I’d exchanged member addresses with.

When I had first started playing The World, some people tried to talk to me and exchange e-mails, but as soon as I started feeling too self-conscious to reply to them, we always fell out of touch.

However, that was just the way things were.

I didn’t regret it.

If the relationship was real, it should have been able to last no matter what.

So, the fact that mine didn’t last meant that those relationships weren’t real.

At the very least, my desire to stay connected with them never outweighed my shyness, and the same must have been true for the other parties as well.

Even now, I didn’t have any desire to reminisce about the past with Alph, and I definitely didn’t want her introducing me to anyone else I don’t know.

I just wanted some information about people.

“I don’t know that many people,” Despite her claim, Alph’s eyes were beaming with pride. “I mean my contact list isn’t even in the triple-digits.”

“Heh.”

I thought about feigning amazement and praising her for being popular at that statement.

I thought about it, but I decided against it. I couldn’t imagine anyone being happy from receiving such obvious flattery.

“So, it’s about this strange PC I met.” I hurried to explain before Alph could say any more. “Something happened to them recently.”

“Strange…you mean their personality?”

“No, not that. It’s more their appearance.”

I told her about the girl I saw. Her clearly unique design and bizarre atmosphere.

But I didn’t tell her anything about Sora. I didn’t want his name getting out and making problems for him.

“She said her name was Aura. She kind of looked like a ghost.”

“A ghost, huh? I see.”

Alph made some vague gestures as she considered what I said. “And this is someone Carl actually met, right?”

“Uh, right.”

My expectations for this conversation were starting to plummet. If Alph didn’t know anything, there wouldn’t be anything I could do.

“And how long have you been trying to find them?”

“Not long, I saw her just before the servers went down.”

“EH~!?” Alph shouted suddenly. “So, you were online for that? You’re so lucky!”

“Lucky how, exactly?”

“I had been eating dinner when it happened, so I missed out. This is good, very good.”

Alph started pacing around while wriggling with excitement.

Though wanting to be around for something like a server outage seemed like an odd concept to me.

“It caused a lot of problems, you know. It’s been a long time since the servers have gone down like that.”

“That’s not what I mean! It’s an event, an event.” I just fell silent. “But is that all? You didn’t get this girl’s member address or anything?”

“Well, that’s the problem, the system went haywire right before that Aura girl could really say anything.”

“So, the timing was almost too perfect, is what you’re saying.” I actually hadn’t even thought of it that way until she pointed it out. “I’ve got it!”

Then Alph suddenly shouted.

I scanned our surroundings. A few PCs looked over at us, but thankfully they all moved on and forgot about it after a few seconds.

“Doesn’t this mean we really are dealing with a ghost?”

“Huh?”

“Ghosts have made their way into the net. That’s what this is!”

I watched Alph jump up and down while feeling like I had been completely left behind.

She settled down when she noticed my dismayed expression, though, forcing herself to look serious.

“You haven’t heard?”

I shook my head silently.

Alph slumped her shoulders, finally seeming to understand something.

“They say this ghost will either bring the player who finds it good luck or bad luck. It may have been responsible for the server outage. Or well… that doesn’t sound like much of a ghost story, does it? There has to be more to it than that. The ghost should have some kind of personal motivation. So, what’s going on, then?”

“Wait.” I had to stop Alph from continuing. “You keep saying ‘ghost’, but there’s no such thing as ghosts. That’s not what she is.”

“What do you mean?”

But Alph just looked confused.

“Because…… someone has to be controlling her. She can’t just be functioning on her own……”

“Hmm, I wonder about that. Is this really something that can be explained so logically?”

I was at a loss for words.

“Besides, isn’t it more fun to pretend it’s something like a ghost?” Alph laughed with a smile that was completely devoid of shame. “I’m not really a fan of logical explanations.”

“Couldn’t she just be a player with a hacked PC?”

“I guess, but still…”

I lost all sense of reality when Alph put it so simply. I felt like I was about to float away, getting carried off by her whimsy.

“So, Aura is her name. It’s not a bad name, but somehow, I feel like it doesn’t quite fit? The atmosphere just isn’t right.”

“Well, I thought that’s what she said. I can’t really be sure.”

“That’s okay.”

“In that case, should we just leave it at that for now?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah!” Alph nodded and turned a bright smile to me. “I bet people would be really surprised if I told them my friend saw a ghost.”

“But I-”

“Of course, I understand.” Alph winked at me. “I’ll ask around. There’s got to be someone who knows what’s going on, right? It’d be a problem if nobody knew anything, so I’ll look into it for you.”

Not too deeply, I hoped. But I wasn’t sure how to tell her that without giving myself away.

Alph was going to do more than just send out a few e-mails to people she knew.

It was probably a good thing that Alph had misunderstood me and thought I was talking about some bizarre ghost story. Better that than think I was serious about what happened.

“But you really surprised me.”

Alph looked me over once more.

“Huh?”

“I was finally contacted by Carl.”

I stared at Alph for a moment.

Was that meant to be sarcasm? Her way of pointing out that I was only talking to her now because it was convenient for me?

When she realized that I was at a loss for words, Alph laughed at me, covering her mouth as she tried to hold it back.

“I’m sorry. It’s just that after all this time, I was really starting to worry that I wouldn’t ever get to talk to Carl again.”

She really had just wanted to see me again. I hadn’t even realized it, but Alph was going well out of her way in order to meet with me tonight.

Alph hadn’t even hesitated to meet with me.

I tried to push my bitter feelings towards Alph out of my mind. I owed her that much now.

“You’ve finally decided on how you want to play The World, haven’t you Carl?”

I wasn’t sure I understood what she meant.

“It looks like you have. Me on the other hand…” Alph pointed at her nose again using the exact same motion she had earlier – she probably had a preset for it. “I feel like I’m still just wandering around waiting for something to happen.”

“Well, I don’t think that’s such a bad thing, for you. Better than what I’m doing, at least.”

All I had been doing was hacking items and PKing to kill time. Although I guess it’s gotten me a lot more satisfaction out of the game than I would have had otherwise.

“No, it’s not good.” Alph shook her head in rejection of what I thought and clasped her hands over her chest. “I’m just passive.”

I resisted the urge to ask why that mattered. Alph’s voice was so unexpectedly hard and certain that I felt like I could cut the tension with a knife.

“That’s why I think it’s great that Carl has decided how she wants to play, even if that means going against the rules and not always following online etiquette.”

That was putting it lightly.

Alph didn’t do the kind of things that I do. In fact, she wholeheartedly believes that what I do is unambiguously wrong.

She’s sent me at least of few e-mails that have made that point perfectly clear.

Telling me how I should consider other people’s feelings, and how even on the internet, you need to show a certain level of kindness.

Obviously, that would be the right thing to do.

But I couldn’t do things the way Alph wanted me to do.

Alph’s ideal playstyle was one that could get along with anyone. Someone popular who others could be proud to call their friend. I can’t be like that. I don’t want to be like that.

And if she can’t accept the way that I do things, then she could just cut ties with me, but Alph didn’t want to do that.

She wanted to keep connected with as many people as possible, even if she had to go out of her way to do so.

In the end, Alph must have decided to keep me in her address book as someone to look out for.

But it was boring to go around acting normally and being a good-mannered person all the time. I was far more interested in meeting delinquents and hackers.

Alph was the kind of person that sorted others into categories, labeling them and cramming them together like jars of jam. Only her labels read things like ‘scary’ or ‘villain’.

That didn’t bother me, though.

I didn’t really care what Alph thought of me, and most people would probably agree with her labels anyways, so it was pointless to be upset.

“I don’t think we should mention Carl’s name to anyone though.”

“Yeah.”

“In that case, I’ll just say I heard it from someone I know.”

“You have to be careful when talking to strangers.”

Alph promised to look into the matter of the ‘ghost’ and returned to Mac Anu.

After that…

The next time I received an e-mail from Alph, I felt like I was stuck at the end of a game of Old Maid.

In the final round with only three cards left in play. Two options to choose from – one safe, one not – and I hadn’t even considered which was which yet.

What would I even do after all of this if I did find Aura again?

The hatred I felt towards her in that moment had been red hot, but if I was honest with myself, that desire I had to kill her then was all but gone now.

Now I felt ashamed of the way I had allowed my emotions to get out of control.

It didn’t really matter because it was just The World, but because it was just The World, I couldn’t forgive myself for becoming so emotional.

And I guess that fire had still been burning when I went to meet Alph.

I just couldn’t stop thinking about it.

But what would I do if I found her again? What if I could get ahold of her member address or even her address in real life?

Would I ask her about Sora?

Or attack her again without question?

Yeah, right.

What if she didn’t even know anything? What if she really was a ghost and couldn’t tell me anything at all?

I wondered how long I would keep trying to look into this.

The PCs passing by were avoiding me. Some eyed me with suspicion, and some just looked annoyed by me.

I shook my head and tried to regain my composure.

I couldn’t think about it. If I thought about it too much, I would get another headache.

I opened the e-mail.

I let out a sigh after reading it. It was a sigh of relief, but also of disappointment.

Alph happily reported that she was able to meet with a couple of players she referred to as ‘Descendants of Fianna’.

This was all thanks to what Carl told me about Aura.

So, thank chu!

I let out a small chuckle.

As far as Alph was concerned, Aura was just a way to get to know Carl better. Something to talk and gossip about.

And I was kind of jealous of her for that mindset.

I wished I could think more like Alph does.

It felt like I would deliberately overthink things and still never find the answers that I was looking for. I tried to satisfy myself with the fact that at least I was thinking about it, but now I felt like that kind of thinking in itself is what makes you an idiot.

I was at a loss and sighed again. This time, it was purely a sigh of disappointment in myself.

There was nowhere for me to go. There was nothing for me to do.

I just stood still, spinning my wheels without accomplishing anything.

ME:1040

The sound of my footsteps echoed off of the ceiling.

As usual, a soft light filled the room.

Feeling a sense of trepidation, I approached the alter.

And I was both relieved and disappointed to find that Sora wasn’t there.

Alph said that Aura was a ghost.

But to me, Sora seemed more like the phantom between the two, so I couldn’t help it.

Throughout my childhood, both in and out of school, I’d been told over and over again that I was shy and quiet.

As if being quiet was somehow wrong.

In their minds, they had an image of what a child should act like, so anyone like me who doesn’t fit that image are seen as troubled children.

I guess I was just a pain to deal with.

It would be so easy to just give them all what they wanted. To be innocent, cheerful, and obedient.

But if you do that, then they would start asking more from you, acting like you’d earned the right to do more for them.

And the moment you stopped giving it to them, they would suddenly start blaming you for it, because they think you’re denying them something that they deserve.

I just didn’t want to end up like a cat chased up a ladder.

I had decided that soon after entering elementary school.

I used to be with a theater company and had to audition for a commercial.

I hadn’t joined the company because I wanted to. My mom had heard about it from an acquaintance and thought it would be a good fit for me, so I didn’t really have a reason to refuse. But I didn’t like the woman, so I just nodded along to everything she said in hopes that we could finish our conversations quickly and go home.

I think she may have actually been a distant relative of my mom’s, but I can’t remember clearly.

However, I remember that she always reeked of perfume. Every time I met her, my nose would get stuffy almost immediately. She must have had a lot of money.

As soon as I joined the troupe, this acquaintance of my mom started following me around like my manager.

“Just leave everything to me. I’ll make sure nothing goes wrong and show Junka the view from the top.

I listened to her exaggerated praise and sales pitch, all the while feeling extremely uncomfortable.

But she just kept praising me, telling me how much of a good girl I was for listening to what she said.

In reality, however, she was just telling me what she thought she was supposed to, because she never had anyone say those kinds of things to her.

And when the audition was over, she told me that I was as good as they come, even though she clearly considered it more of a credit to her own abilities than mine.

I could still remember how her lipstick was applied different on either side of her mouth, and she always had clumps of it mixed with spit at the corners. I would always notice when she smiled wide and told me how proud she was of me.

I think the audition had been for some kind of ketchup or tomato sauce commercial.

All I’d needed to do was say “Delicious” and smile at the camera. After that, there was just a short interview, and I was done.

The other participants all put on their best fake smiles and answered quickly, and sometimes, the whole room would erupt with laughter at what was said.

But when it was my turn, I wouldn’t react at all to what the director said to me, or to the big guy in the suit next to him.

When I was asked a question, I didn’t show my emotions, and I didn’t even bother looking at the script I was supposed to read from. My mom’s acquaintance would get mad at me for that or try to get me to behave by promising rewards. Then she would turn around and make excuses to the director about me being a sensitive child.

Obviously, the people at the company gave up long before she did.

And obviously, I didn’t get the part, though it took a while for my mom’s acquaintance to accept that. It was funny how she kept trying to think up ways it could still work out, like saying they might like my stubbornness or recognize my appeal since they’re such discerning individuals. That kind of thing only happened in manga.

And yet she still managed to act surprised when the official rejection came and claimed that she had only been doing this for my sake with a sad expression.

And when I wouldn’t get upset or cry over it like she did, she was even more shocked.

“Why didn’t you tell me from the start that you didn’t like it?”

My mom had asked me that after it was all over. And of course, I had wanted to tell her that, but it had seemed obvious to me that I was going to get roped into it even if I tried.

So instead of telling her and getting shut down, I just nodded along and pretended to be interested.

That was the last I saw of mom’s acquaintance. She wasn’t the kind of person I wanted to hang out with for long anyways, but I guess she had finally decided that I wasn’t worth her time.

She may have been an acquaintance of my mom, but for me, it had only been a professional relationship. It hadn’t gone any further than that.

My mom didn’t say anything when I quit, either. Just as she hadn’t said anything when I joined in the first place.

I had been relieved, but after a while, I also felt a little dejected.

I started wondering if I really should have refused right from the start and thrown a tantrum until they gave up on me.

That was when I started questioning why kids always try so hard to live up to the expectations of adults? Was it just easier for them to live like that? At least if they were acting childish, I felt like I could understand why.

People find it easier to live up to the expectations of the world around them. That’s why they all behaved the way they were expected to.

And because of that, I was the one that ends up looking foolish in the end.

The other kids at the audition had looked at me with pity. Not one of them praised or admired me for my courage. They all looked at me like they thought I was an idiot.

And really, they were right. I was a reckless, selfish, clueless idiot.

I just couldn’t escape from the cage that was my own self.

But Sora seemed completely free from all of those dumb rules and expectations. It was like he didn’t care at all about what anyone else wanted from him.

How could Sora be so carefree?

Was it possible that even he was still caught up in other obligations and responsibilities that I didn’t know about?

I looked around feeling like I was in a daze.

For the first time, my perspective of the cathedral seemed to fall apart.

Sora wasn’t here anymore. I couldn’t meet Sora in The World anymore.

And I realized that nothing really mattered anymore.

My body felt heavy. It felt like I was going to fall over if I didn’t keep my feet firmly planted on the ground.

And then something happened.

A soft breeze caressed the back of my neck.

But rather than comforted, I felt scared as I turned around.

Then I realized it was above me, not behind me.

The light shining through the canopy seemed like it was getting more intense.

Beams of light danced around me as if they were playing a game of tag.

And in the center of that light, something beautiful appeared.

She wore a fluttering, pearlescent dress.

She descended like an angel.

But she wasn’t here to deliver a prophecy. This was a sign of something much more sinister.

The girl came to a silent stop just above the altar.

Her wavy hair was fluttering slowly just like her dress.

I caught another glimpse of her slender toes under the hem.

Her feet were so small. And her toenails were cherry pink.

Her eyelids shook and opened.

And the eyes behind them were a brilliant, chilling blue.

I tried to call out her name, but no sound came out. I couldn’t get my tongue to move.

Her transcendent smile disappeared, and her expression clouded over.

“……an’t tru…urt…im”

“Huh…?”

I blinked at her.

Aura muttered something under her breath with a blank expression.

“I……ll b……ere.”

“What? What was that?”

I felt a fresh surge of annoyance course through me.

Her voice was flat and monotone, but there was a vague sense of purpose behind it.

“What is it!? What are you trying to tell me?”

I looked up and shouted at her.

But Aura didn’t react at all.

She just stared into the distance, like she was looking at someone else entirely.

Where were they?

Who were they?

Sora?

I gathered my resolve and furrowed my brow into a hard line.

I looked through my scrolls to start casting a spell.

“Meteor Swarm!”

That was the strongest attack magic I could use now.

However, the effect was completely neutralized, and it fizzled out harmlessly around her.

I jumped up and swung my axe at her.

And although it pierced her body, she likewise gave no reaction.

I needed to calm down. Rushing in wouldn’t help.

I took a deep breath.

Then took a few steps back to look Aura up and down.

“Who are you? What are you?”

I spoke to her with murderous intent in my voice.

Aura’s body suddenly jumped up.

Her outline had been blurred and hazy before, but now it suddenly solidified and became clear.

“Don’t hurt me!”

All of a sudden, Aura looked frightened of me. She looked confused, as if she was trying to understand why I was attacking her.

“Why are you here? Where is Sora?”

“Please don’t hurt me.”

Aura ignored my questions and trembled in fear.

“What is with you?”

I met Aura’s pleas with an intimidating tone.

“Please,” Aura begged. “Please, please, please.”

“Shut up.”

She kept repeating that plea, denying me my answers. She may as well have been cursing at me.

“Shut the hell up already! Why won’t you just die?”

So, I kept cursing her right back, the words falling like vomit from my mouth.

Aura’s voice hitched.

The space around us distorted.

And the light of the cathedral faded away.

RE:2000

There had once been a time when – true to its name - The World had been a certain girl’s whole reality.

And it hadn’t been all that long ago.

In The World, she was able to be whoever she wanted to be. She could be loved by and give strength to others.

In The World, time lost all meaning. If she wished it, her days could pass much more quickly or much more slowly than they did in reality. And if she wished it, she could have lived there for all eternity.

She had lived happily within The World.

Now, in real life, she was tied down one meter above the ground.

Her visibility was low and narrow.

Her lower body was heavy and gaunt, and she often drew the attention of others, usually in the form of pity, contempt, and scorn.

Being real meant that she was constantly exposed to those kinds of dirty looks.

She didn’t yet have the armor needed to shrug them off, but neither did she have the strength to try and fight back.

Furthermore, she was already hurt and confused herself.

The World could have made all of her pain and suffering go away. It could have made it seem like none of it existed in the first place.

However, she had already decided to leave that world behind.

She crossed over from a city constructed of 1s and 0s to the unruly land of reality.

She left The World behind because she finally realized that she had been a fraud there.

A liar. None of it had been real.

She could have pretended it was real if she had stayed in The World. If nothing else, she had at least stayed true to the role she wanted to play in The World.

But the real reason she had logged into The World had been because she’d sought salvation.

Because she’d wanted to escape from reality.

Once she had stopped acting, however, all she found left behind was herself, as uncertain of herself and skeptical of others as always. It had been the same both online and in real life.

Her role in The World was meant to be her armor, but in the end, it had been broken all too easily.

Anything she had said or done had just been her trying to emulate things she’d seen in movies or read in novels.

All lies. Just something to distract her from reality.

She had turned her back, run away, and tried to forget about it. She didn’t even want the chance to hate it.

Because if she had felt anything at all, it would have meant acknowledging that it was real.

However.

She had returned to reality in order to feel that hurt.

To know the pain.

And to share that pain with the people she loved.

Without even needing to think about it, her fingers moved to type in her password.

The former player chuckled at the fact her fingers still remembered all the login procedures.

But when she saw the title screen with a twilight cover display, she did not feel any sense of nostalgia. She didn’t miss it, and she didn’t feel any draw to return to it. The only thing it was, was familiar.

That was just how much The World had become a part of Subaru’s – of Mariko Misono’s daily life.

And Mariko felt like it was still very close to who she was.

It had been three months since she’d last logged in to her account, and it seemed she now had over a hundred e-mails piled up in her inbox.

It was in reading the names of those who had sent them that Mariko finally felt that sense of nostalgia.

Names of the Crimson Knights which she had once overseen. Her guildmembers.

Mariko opened the letters one-by-one in order of date sent and read each one carefully.

Many openly lamented the fact that it had been so long since she had logged in, and some even spoke bitterly about it, but as time went on, they gradually grew more distant.

It seemed that the more intense the sender was, the quicker they lost interest.

The last of the e-mails was from two days ago, and was from a member who – as Subaru’s second-in-command – had opposed the dissolution of the Knights right to the very end.

Mariko smiled as she recalled his by-the-books manner and the way he always stood so straight as though it would make him seem taller.

The tone of his e-mail was somehow softer than that image of him, however. He asked how Mariko was doing in real life while explaining his own situation.

He stated that he was now working part-time as an assistant manager and looking to become full-time.

And towards the end, he casually mentioned the commotion that was recently occurring in The World.

There seems to have been an incident at the area <Hidden Forbidden Holy Ground>.

It seems that a total of 38 PCs (this is according to the official forums) were suddenly warped to the area at once.

The PCs who were ‘summoned’ had nothing in common, and many were even transferred in from different servers.

There aren’t any spells or items capable of doing this (obviously).

But I am curious about the location.

Also, the claim that they were all ‘called’ by a young girl seems a bit far-fetched.

Well, that’s enough for now I suppose.

It was the most interesting story I’d heard of recently.

Mariko read the text over and over again.

After having logged in for the first time in so long, she was curious what all the fuss was about.

She opened the BBS immediately.

The discussion seemed to have already died out, but there were so many threads that it took her two hours just to skim through them all, both the useful and useless ones.

People were excited. They wanted to talk about it, know more, and be a part of it.

The people that experienced it were worshipped like gods, and the rest listened and hung on their every word.

However, both the incident and its cause were still unclear at the moment.

She had sorted through the information, eliminating rumors as much as possible, and found that the PCs in question were warped to the Cathedral abnormally, causing such an overload of data that it became unplayable, forcing them all to log out.

Even if a server were being overtaxed from an excessive number of players, there was no way it would end up forwarding people to a different area. Even if it did, it wouldn’t be using any less data – if anything, it would require even more.

If it really had happened, it would have to have been a programming error by CC Corp., but then it would also be strange that the system had been running normally until just the day before, only to suddenly go haywire. But if it were just a bug, it wouldn’t have affected so many people all at once; not unless they had all entered the same command at the same time.

It was theoretically possible that a hacker had tampered with the game’s code, but that was hardly likely. Just cracking into the system would be a challenge, but hacking it to the point of creating such an irregular phenomenon was just crazy.

Beyond that, even the accounts from those who had experienced the incident first-hand were mixed.

Some people had been warped from a field with their party, while others said they found themselves there suddenly after walking into a shop in town. And then some claimed they had been pulled away from their parties while fighting in a dungeon, leaving everyone but them to be wiped out.

And yet some players said they hadn’t even realized they were in <Hidden Forbidden Holy Ground> when it happened, and claim that what had started as a blinding light covering their vision then condensed into various different images, ranging from a shrine divided between night and day, an inverted rainbow, a comet crossing over an altar, a pillar of light reaching up from the ocean floor, or Celtic writings in the sky.

A few people in the thread tried to analyze the meaning of the scenes symbolically, but most of them ended up being more pedantic than insightful.

The one thing that caught Mariko’s attention was the general agreement that there had been two PCs there already who were talking to each other.

They claimed to have seen a young girl with a tall woman standing near the altar. However, the game had frozen after just getting a glimpse, so they couldn’t even be sure if they had been PCs or NPCs. Both had appeared female, but they said the taller one could have been a male with long hair.

But among all the other details making the affair sound like some kind of religious experience, that part was so mundane that everyone else was brushing it off.

Mariko wished she knew what kind of PC they really were, but it may have already been too late.

As soon as a statement had been released by CC Corp. about the incident, the people’s focus shifted to rejecting their explanation of the event rather than continuing their search for the truth.

Whether in real life or online, people were quick to change their minds. In fact, often times that change seemed to happen even faster online.

Once an apology was posted by CC Corp., their interest quickly waned.

There were still a few people posting about it, but they just ended up reiterating what had already been said while trying to find new context to mix things up.

Mariko finished reading the posts and then began searching through the threads that had been made since the incident.

She searched for the words ‘Morganna’, ‘Tsukasa’, and then ‘Harald’.

Each search got anywhere from a few dozen to a few hundred results, but none of them looked important to Mariko.

She tried typing in the word ‘girl’, hit search, and as expected received several thousand results.

Then she tried adding ‘Aura’ to the search criteria.

It took a moment for the page to refresh and bring up the new batch of results.

And there, Mariko finally found what she was looking for.

“I knew it……”

Without realizing it, Mariko had begun to use Subaru’s tone of voice.

Half a day later, Mariko received a strange e-mail. And rather than finding it in the address she had under CC Corp.’s domain, she found it under the one she used for school – which she had of course never shared with her acquaintances from The World.

The sender’s name was listed as ‘Ichiro Sato’ – but that was obviously a pseudonym.

Under normal circumstances, she would have deleted it without even reading it, but Mariko opened it because the e-mail’s subject line read ‘Tsukasa is survived by Aura’.

It was an ominous title. In Japanese, it could be translated as ‘Tsukasa has left Aura behind’

But for some reason, Mariko reflexively read it more as ‘Tsukasa is being kept alive by Aura’.

She was confident in her English – she would even say she enjoyed it. Her grades were high enough for her to be considered at a university entrance exam level.

So, Mariko looked again at the original phrase and read it back that way.

‘Tsukasa is survived by Aura’.

It was true that Tsukasa had departed from The World, so the metaphor that Tsukasa’s essence was being maintained within Aura would not be entirely mistaken.

But either way, it was disturbing the way it had been phrased.

Mariko hesitated for a moment, but gathered up what little resolve she had and opened the e-mail.

Unfortunately, her effort was met with disappointment. The text was completely blank.

Mariko stared at the empty e-mail for quite some time.

Questions danced in the air around her, and confusion crept into her heart.

Mariko’s past was calling out to her from beyond the veil of twilight with white arms spread wide. All the things she’d thought and seen during that time came instantly back to her.

She did not feel afraid.

Rather, a sense of nostalgia for The World finally rose up within her.

Perhaps it was the difference between what ‘Tsukasa’ had experienced and what ‘Subaru’ had experienced.

Tsukasa likely would not have felt nostalgic – not now, at least.

Mariko and ‘Tsukasa’ – An Shoji – had spent a lot of time together without discussing a single word of what she had been through before. It was an incident which could neither be considered a dream or a real experience.

An incident in which the PC ‘Tsukasa’ had become trapped within The World.

Tsukasa became unable to log out of The World and could do nothing but wander while the real An Shoji had fallen into an unexplainable coma.

Aura had been the cause of Tsukasa’s entrapment, but she was also the cause of their release.

Tsukasa had been chosen to act as Aura’s ‘core’.

However, that purpose was not fulfilled, and so Tsukasa was able to miraculously return to reality.

Tsukasa and Subaru then met anew as An Shoji and Mariko Misono, and became close once again.

They couldn’t see each other very often at the moment, but they made the most of things through phone calls and letters.

When they woke up, what books they were reading and their thoughts on them, the budding trees outside their houses, or the taste of a new chocolate brand.

They mostly talked about trivial things like that, but the two of them still kept exchanging those pleasantries as if it were all part of a secret game they had created for just them.

A game comprised of completely innocuous and innocent conversation.

They gave each other advice while taking great care to not be intrusive.

But most of all, they gave each other love.

They never talked about serious concerns or frustrations, like what had happened in The World.

Maybe they were just afraid, even if there was no reason to be.

But the hurt the two of them felt was so real that they subconsciously hesitated to acknowledge just how deep their wounds really were.

Even after having experienced what they had in The World and choosing to return to reality, the pain was still there.

For now, all they could do was pay attention to their own footing.

Mariko was aware that An had been thinking about Aura for a long time, even though she had erased her account in The World herself after relocating.

It wasn’t that she was avoiding it, she just couldn’t bring herself to mention it.

However, Mariko would occasionally catch An freeze up for a moment, and could only imagine she was thinking about Aura in those moments.

Mariko wasn’t ignoring her, but she didn’t want to make a big deal out of it either. Still, whenever they talked, she did feel a vague sense of regret for not knowing what her true feelings were.

After all, nobody can know someone better than they know themselves. Even if you thought you understood, there would always be a discrepancy between your own perception and theirs.

That was why Mariko had only asked An about it just once before.

What was Aura to Tsukasa? What had she meant to them, really?

An had fallen silent over the phone and thought about it for a long time.

“I don’t know.”

She eventually confessed.

“I didn’t think of her like a family member, or even a part of myself. Even the warmth I felt from her at the time may have been fabricated.”

“But she was important to you, wasn’t she?”

“Probably,” was the only answer An gave her.

After that, Mariko decided not to pursue the matter any further.

Would An slowly forget about Aura in the future? Or would she continue to question what Aura meant to her? No one could know for sure what the answer to that was.

Forcing An to give her an answer now would be worse than useless; it would only hurt her.

It may have been the kind of question that An needed time to answer on her own.

And as for Mariko – Subaru could only quietly watch over Tsukasa. Just as she had done in The World.

“It’s because Subaru was there.”

Those had been An’s words while resting her cheek on Mariko’s knee.

This was only the second time they had met in person.

“I didn’t do anything.”

“That’s not true.”

An shook her head and kneeled down to look up at Mariko in her wheelchair.

“Subaru is the only reason I’m still here.”

Mariko actually felt the same way.

But instead of saying it out loud, Mariko just stroked An’s hair.

She felt the shape of An’s head through her hands. She couldn’t feel anything through her legs, but that fact didn’t disgust her like it used to.

At the moment, An was living at a boarding school near Kanto. In addition to catching up on her studies, she also had physical rehabilitation to attend and was trying to build up new relationships from scratch. She always gave Mariko a positive report of her time there, but she was probably struggling to handle it all.

So, she didn’t think it would be a good idea to bother An with thoughts of The World again.

Before doing something like that, Mariko decided she had to investigate the contents of this strange e-mail first.

Once she had some concrete information on what was going on, then Mariko could let An know about it.

But for the time being…

Mariko had only one clue on the screen in front of her.

Aura. A girl. The Cathedral. Basho’s disciple. A character wrapped in bandages.

I would like to know more about these things.

Please share what you know.

This post had been written two days ago, but no one had responded yet.

And for obvious reasons. Nobody would have the slightest clue what they were talking about.

The post was so vague without any details that Mariko had to wonder if they were deliberately trying to stir up some chaos, but that didn’t really seem to be the case.

The strangest part was that they had attached an e-mail address.

They had intentionally written their post in a way that was difficult to understand.

And it had probably been done to avoid scrutiny and getting bogged down with useless information.

Someone had written this post, but for what purpose? Mariko tried to imagine the kind of person that would be on the other side of the monitor.

What emotions were driving them? Was it simple curiosity; or something more?

And why had they made their request so politely? Why had they said, ‘please share what you know’ instead of simply ‘tell me what you know’?

There was something oddly earnest in their short, well-mannered sentences.

Mariko blinked once and started drafting a new e-mail.

“Nice to meet you.”

Her FMD’s microphone picked up her voice, and the words she spoke were automatically written down as text.

“I hope I’m not bothering you. I saw your post and would like to speak with you.”

Mariko began her story with a brief self-introduction.

She had to speak with this person. Of that much, she was certain.

ME:1050

To be honest, I really wasn’t expecting anything to come out of that post.

At first, I was re-checking the board every few minutes. But by the next day, I had already given up.

By the end of the second day, there were so many threads that I couldn’t even find my original post in the logs. I had the option of re-posting, I suppose, but I figured that no one knew anything about it after all, so I gave up.

Though it may have been a bit of a relief as well; just a bit.

I think I might have been looking for someone to tell me to stop making such a big deal out of nothing.

Because if they had, then I would actually be able to get rid of the things occupying my thoughts.

And that’s why when I saw that I had received a new e-mail, I opened it without thinking, assuming it was from Alph.

But the sender was a complete stranger to me.

I stiffened up as I felt goosebumps crawl over my skin like someone had stuffed fish down my throat.

The speaker was polite, but that didn’t tell me anything important.

It read like the first in a series of scam mails, like they were being nice just to try and get close to me.

This wasn’t someone I could trust.

I narrowed my eyes and tried to figure out who this sender was. I wondered what kind of malice was hiding behind their calm text.

I checked the BBS to make sure. If this was someone who read my post, they might have responded there as well.

But the BBS was just filled with the usual chatter and pointless greetings.

When had the person who sent me this e-mail seen my post? And why had they send me an -email but not replied to the post directly?

It was kind of unnerving.

Their PC name was Subaru – a girl – and were apparently addicted to The World not long ago. Or to use her own words, she felt like she was ‘sinking’ in it.

The fact she was using past tense probably meant that she was over it now, though. But strangely, it felt almost like they were trying to brag about their graduation to me.

And then she said with a very polite tone that she might be able to help me.

――If you haven’t changed your mind about wanting to know more, let’s meet in The World.

I stared at the last line.

Honestly, I thought I’d had enough.

Every time I logged into The World, I felt exhausted.

And yet I still logged in every day, like an addiction. Without thinking about it, I always found myself stepping back through the Chaos Gate into the city.

I was fed up with looking at a screen that wasn’t ever going to change.

It wasn’t hatred or anger anymore. I just felt tired.

Even my headaches were becoming a more vague, dull ache instead of the sharp pain they used to be.

It felt like I was gradually getting dumber.

I had to wonder if there was going to be anything worthwhile waiting for me down this path.

I was starting to worry it was all a dead end.

I stared at the monitor so hard that I forgot to blink, and tears welled up in my eyes.

“No.”

I softly muttered a single word.

I didn’t care. Not enough to stop myself, at least.

With a strange mixture of laziness, resignation, and desperation, I sank back into The World.

She said in her e-mail that she would be waiting for me at <Hidden Forbidden Holy Ground>.

It was probably because I had used the word ‘Cathedral’ in my post, but the thought of meeting their made me feel faint. It was unsettling.

I didn’t want anyone else to enter that place anymore. It was such a ridiculous, possessive desire.

So, I wrote her back saying I wouldn’t meet there. Instead, I told her to meet me at the aerial city Fort Ouph.

A city floating in a sea of clouds. Narrow bridges connected a number of small islands together, each barely large enough to hold a single store. And looking down from the middle of one of the bridges, I could see the clouds drifting by below.

A cold stone building stood covered in lush trees. Something about the air here made me hesitate to speak out loud.

The number of people here seemed much smaller than in the other Root Towns.

With nothing else to do, I waited patiently in front of the Grunty Shop.

I was half an hour early for the time we’d agreed to meet, but that was fine.

I figured it would be better to wait, even if it made me stand out, than for them to see me rushing in after them.

And I also wanted to make sure I could see them coming.

I didn’t want them to be able to come out of nowhere and startle me.

If possible, it would be better for the other person to show up late. If she had to apologize for her own tardiness, it would give me an edge on her.

Various different PCs passed me by.

Their designs and color options were limited, and their motions for smiling, walking, turning, and everything else was all preprogrammed. Everything was just a combination of those factors, so if two of the same PC took the same action, you’d never be able to tell the difference between them.

But in her own way, there was one PC that did catch my attention.

Wide, puffy sleeves. A long, blue-tinted white dress, although it was cut to leave her waist and stomach exposed. Her curly hair bounced with each step.

She had a red wave tattoo on her forehead, and tiny little wings sprouting out from her shoulder blades.

At first glance, I thought she looked appalling.

But at the same time, I instinctually knew that she was the sender of that e-mail.

“You’re Miss Carl, right?”

I couldn’t decide if she sounded childish or just soft-spoken. But her inflection was calm and mature. It seemed contradictory.

“And you’re Subaru?”

Instead of nodding, I raised my head and confirmed she was who I was waiting for.

But she didn’t show any sign of being put off by it.

“That’s right. It’s nice to meet you. To be honest, I was worried you might not show up.”

“What do you mean by that?”

The tone of my voice might have been too hostile because she froze and laughed nervously for a moment and then just shook her head before saying it was nothing.

“I just really wanted to meet with you. I’m sorry.”

Subaru lowered her gaze apologetically.

But I wasn’t sure if I actually believed that. She may have been trying to play it down for her own benefit.

“Are you sure you want to talk about this here? Wouldn’t it be better if we went to a field or somewhere else to talk?”

“Here is fine.”

I told her directly.

“So, we’ll use a party chat then?”

She wanted to make sure we weren’t overheard.

It was a bit obnoxious that she went and made the decision on her own, though. I was the one that should have been setting the terms here.

“Something you’re afraid of?”

“Not exactly.”

Subaru trailed off.

But that she was denying it in such an ambiguous way meant that it wasn’t entirely incorrect. Though I hesitated to ask if there was actually something wrong.

Damn it. I was getting sick of all this. I just wanted to get this over with.

“Let me ask you something first. Why did you respond to my post?”

“Curiosity.”

My shoulders shook with annoyance from Subaru’s simplistic answer.

“You’re curious? But I don’t have anything to tell you; I’m the one looking for answers.”

But Subaru just smiled and shook her head.

“I just wanted to meet you for myself.”

“Do you always talk like that?”

“Like what?”

Subaru tilted her head.

“I get that you’re trying to be polite, but it feels more like you’re making fun of me and treating me like an idiot.”

Subaru’s face quickly turned red.

“I’m so sorry!”

She apologized again and bowed her head. “This was how I used to talk while playing.”

“Oh. Well, that’s fine then.”

If she was bragging about her player history, I didn’t want to hear it.

“Can I ask you a question as well?”

“…What?”

I was immediately put on alert.

But then – almost as if she could read my thoughts – she added, “You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

“Okay, so what is it?”

I became continuously more annoyed and tapped the ground with my axe. The sound of metal striking stone echoed through the air.

After a moment of hesitation, Subaru opened her mouth.

“Was Aura doing alright?”

I stared at Subaru, completely lost for words.

But she was looking me dead in the eye.

I looked away first.

What was I doing? My character was supposed to be more mature than this.

She’s supposed to be calm and collected, never showing her anger or hatred. Or when she did, she would do so in a roundabout way.

But in front of this girl, I can’t help but be reminded of how old I really am. Her gaze made me feel uncomfortable, like my act was being seen through and shattered to pieces.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Again. I should have been more confident, but I sounded like I was barely hanging on when I answered her.

“Could you please tell me how she’s doing?”

“Huh?”

This girl.

She was throwing me completely off guard.

She spoke like she was asking after a family member. She was compassionate, tender, she even sounded like she might have been proud.

“You mean… you really know who she is? That girl?”

“I’ve met with Aura a few times before.”

“And that… I mean… am I safe?”

I asked a genuine question, but Subaru just frowned at me in confusion.

“What did she…”

“She was terrible, bah!”

“Terrible?”

I had just spat the words out, but Subaru’s expression darkened in response.

I put my hands on my hips and lifted my chin high.

“Are you supposed to be her friend? Her ally?”

“Did she do something to you? But that’s not……”

“Hold on a second.”

I held out my hand to stop Subaru from continuing. “‘That’s not something she would do.’ Was that what you were about to say?”

If that were the case, then I wasn’t going to talk with her about it anymore. If she had already reached her own conclusions, then this conversation was pointless.

“I have to make sure. It’s not easy for me to talk about Aura.”

“So, you really have met her before?”

“Yes, I have.”

“Then why are you saying you don’t know anything? I don’t get you!”

Subaru smiled wistfully.

But a second later, her smile disappeared, and her gaze became distant. I squinted into the sunlight passed the sea of clouds.

I tried to find what she could be looking at.

I watched the shape of the clouds rise and swell like waves, changing from moment to moment.

It was captivating, and made me want to jump right into the middle of them.

But when I came back to my senses, I realized that Subaru was staring at me.

“Do you mind listening to a bit of a long story?”

With that as her only preamble, the other girl opened her mouth to speak at length.

“If she – If Aura has truly done something cruel or hurtful to you, I beg you to forgive her. I can assure you that she doesn’t mean you any harm.”

“So what? Just because someone doesn’t mean you harm, is that supposed to be a free pass to do whatever they want?”

“That’s not what I mean. Right now, Aura is basically still an infant.”

“An infant?”

“Yes. Right now, she’s really just scared and confused.”

She had seemed young, but she couldn’t have actually been an infant.

“Although she has incredible power, she doesn’t understand how to control it properly yet.”

“And despite that, you’ve left her unchecked?”

I wrinkled my nose at Subaru.

How had this girl even been allowed to gain these special abilities? The only thing I could think of was that it was some kind of programming error.

This was not something that should exist in The World. No other PC in this game could do anything like what she can.

“She is a child who was never supposed to be born.”

“Wha-……”

My jaw dropped as she said something completely unexpected.

“Not only has her mother abandoned her, but now she’s hunting her down.”

“Hold on. Wait just one second.”

I was starting to panic, so I interrupted her. “You’re not actually serious right now, are you?”

“If it’s easier for you to accept, you may assume so.”

“Which is it!?”

“She is of The World.”

Subaru spoke with the conviction of a priestess who had received an oracle from god.

“I am ‘Subaru’. That is true, but only here in The World. As far as the real world is concerned, the individual known as ‘Subaru’ does not actually exist.”

“And you’re saying that’s what Aura is supposed to be? You said she was abandoned; an NPC?”

“Miss Carl,”

Subaru called me by my name.

“I call myself Subaru here, but in real life my name is Mariko Misono. However, that doesn’t mean that Mariko Misono is ‘real’ or that Subaru is ‘fake’. Both versions of me exist. Neither form is greater or lesser than the other.”

“But…”

I wanted to argue with her, but she was staring at me so intensely that I couldn’t bring myself to talk back at her.

Subaru wasn’t blinking as she said all of this.

“Regardless of her origin, Aura is real. For that matter, the feelings I had towards her are real, as well. All of it was real.”

Subaru reiterated her point.

“Why the past tense?”

“As I explained to you in my e-mail, I haven’t been logging into The World anymore recently.”

“So, you just got tired of dealing with her? You don’t want to be involved anymore, but you’re fine with pushing the responsibility onto someone else?”

“No. At least where Aura is concerned, we can’t get involved.”

“And why the hell not!?” The more she said, the less I felt I understood. In the end, there was only one thing I could really ask her, “What is it you even want me to do with her?”

I blinked once. Her chest rose and fell as she took a deep breath.

“I want to ask that you protect her. Please.”

I wanted to laugh at that ridiculous request, but I just sputtered and froze.

“You’re insane.”

After a moment, I gave a heavy sigh and spat something out to ridicule her.

“I can’t do it.”

“And why the hell not!?

I felt so stupid for asking the same thing over and over again. I just wanted to curl up and cry at this point.

But I couldn’t show that kind of face to Subaru, so I clenched my fists as tightly as I could.

“Aura will no longer appear before us. We’ve lost the right to see her.”

“The right?”

“Exactly.” Subaru nodded. “And I believe Aura has chosen you to inherit that right.”

“Stop it!”

I let out a terrible high-pitched scream.

If she had chosen me, did that mean she was going to follow me around everywhere? All the time?

When she was the reason that Sora was suffering!?

And she wants me to protect that freak of an NPC? What a joke. What a fucking joke!

“What are you talking about? That thing is a curse. Don’t you dare try to force the responsibility for this on me!”

Subaru watched me intently while I shouted at her and wildly swung my arms around like I was trying to clear away a spider web.

And then I finally realized that Subaru was still just staring at me even as I screamed my head off.

I couldn’t pull my eyes away from hers.

I stared back at Subaru while breathing heavily.

Finally, Subaru opened her mouth to speak again.

“She was the first child to be born to The World – No, that’s wrong.”

She corrected herself, and then Subaru clasped her hands together in front of her chest as if she were making a prayer.

“I think The World was supposed to be like a cradle for nurturing her in the first place.

“How does that work?”

I chided her.

The World was just an online game. That’s all it was.

So why did this person look so serious while telling me things that make no sense?

“Have you ever heard of the ‘Guardian’?”

Subaru asked, and then explained what this ‘Guardian’ was – calling it an irregular monster with a translucent, malleable body that looked like a giant dumbbell.

“Never heard of it.”

“Then, how about the PC named Tsukasa who was said to have control over it?”

“Never heard of them, either.”

I rarely checked the BBS, and I don’t talk with other PCs very often. Thinking about it, I was probably the least sociable player in all The World.

“Before you, Tsukasa was the only player who could interact with Aura. At that time however, Aura had not yet awakened.”

“Then let them take care of her.”

“Tsukasa would only distort Aura.”

Subaru smiled at me, but it looked like a pained smile.

“Just like how an overabundance of love from a parent does not always lead their child in the right direction, being with Tsukasa would most likely not be in Aura’s best interest.”

“So, what!? Just because of that, does that mean the parent shouldn’t be around at all!?

“No, of course not. But Tsukasa can’t come here anymore.”

“What……”

“Did you ever hear the news about a player who fell into a coma while playing The World?”

Even with how little I paid attention to the news and rumors, that I had heard about.

But nobody had been able to link the coma’s cause directly to The World.

Far from knowing the cause, I didn’t even know what had happened to that person in the end.

“You mean…”

Looking up, Subaru gave a small nod.

“They’re dead?”

“They’re alive. But they can’t log back into The World anymore.”

“Why? If you really mean everything you’ve said, then you must care about this Aura, right? But you left her behind? You abandoned her?”

“That’s not it.”

This time, Subaru denied it directly.

“I think Tsukasa tried their best. And I know they still think about Aura a lot. But they can’t meet now. Please understand, asking Tsukasa to meet with Aura as things are would be a terrible thing for both of them. Tsukasa is still recovering. And I’m not sure if they could really help Aura as they…”

Before I could say I didn’t understand again, Subaru shook her head.

“So, you’re just going to make that decision for them? I bet you think you’re so smart, don’t you? You come to your own conclusions and decide how things should be yourself. And yet you’re so confident that you’re right – are you psychic?”

I threw my words out like stones trying to chip away at her confidence.

I just needed something to hit. Hit her where it would hurt.

“Then why did Aura appear to you, and not to me?”

“She……” I bit my lip. My voice was starting to shake, and I hated that I was letting her get to me. “I don’t know, damn it!”

I wanted to get out of here right now.

It had been a mistake to write that damn post after all.

Before I knew it, The World had become such a boring place.

It used to be more fun.

I used to be able to forget all the boredom and annoyances of real life by coming here.

But now, The World could no longer serve as my place of escape – my secret base.

I turned my back on Subaru.

“Carl,”

Even now, she spoke with such a dignified tone of voice.

She had such a powerful force of will.

I stopped, unable to resist. I didn’t look back, but that was all I could do.

“Are you only here to get something out of The World for yourself? Don’t you have any desire to give something back to it?”

I didn’t answer. I wasn’t sure I could.

“What are you to The World?”

Subaru’s voice pierced my chest.

My feet started moving on their own, trying to escape that question.

I was scared.

I was glad I hadn’t told her about Sora, though.

If she had tried to use Sora against me, I would have been in real trouble.

Sora. That’s right. He was the one that really mattered.

SE:2010

Balmung glared at Orca, not bothering to hide the foul mood he was in.

“I did what I had to do.”

Orca muttered an excuse, but Balmung’s expression did not change.

“Then at least follow it through to the end.”

At that, even Orca couldn’t help but make a hollow laugh.

“You’re the one in charge of communications.”

“Don’t decide that now.”

“I misspoke. I meant negotiations. Interpersonal relations are your forte, after all.”

“That’s basically the same thing, isn’t it?”

Orca scratched his head.

“I put a lot of effort into getting this all written down. You read it, didn’t you?”

At Orca’s question, Balmung nodded begrudgingly.

“…Obviously.”

“The only issue is, now I don’t know what to do next.”

“Just send another e-mail.”

“It’s not that easy.” Orca sniffed. “She refused, so that’s the end of it.”

“Have you actually tried?”

“Yes.” Balmung snarled at Orca’s simple reply. “So, for the time being, we’ll have to settle for finding the next best thing.”

“Fine. I’ll accept that.”

Balmung sighed loudly, but the atmosphere finally started to feel a bit less tense.

The World had been experiencing a lot of bugs lately, but thanks to the speed at which CC Corp. was handling them, there wasn’t a lot of chatter about it. That said – Server outages, abnormal transfers – things of that nature never used to happen at all within The World.

Orca and Balmung’s sense of urgency was growing, but their investigation was slow getting underway.

Just as he had been starting to feel impatient, Balmung found a strange post on the BBS.

It hadn’t made any sense, but something about it had stuck with Balmung. And when he showed the log to Orca, he felt the same way.

The post itself had quickly disappeared into the sea of other posts, and though he had kept it archived, when he extracted it and searched again, he hadn’t been able to find it.

And then two days ago, Orca had dug through Balmung’s private logs to find what they needed and decided to send an e-mail to the poster since he was at least somewhat good at writing.

The e-mail had simply said that he wanted to get in touch and introduce himself – he had wanted to avoid giving a bad first impression.

However, he had received no reply after sending it out, and when he tried a second time, he got an alert that his address had been blocked by the recipient.

He wanted to say that it wasn’t all that strange. He had laid it on pretty thick in his introduction, so he may have come off as some annoying guy that just wanted to brag. The more he pushed, the worse he would look.

It was a lackluster conclusion completely unbefitting of the Descendants of Fianna.

“There’s still that little Wavemaster, right? The one who seemed to be a fan of yours?”

“……Yeah.”

Balmung scrunched his expression like he had smelled something rotten.

“Wasn’t it a friend of hers who claimed to have seen Aura in the first place? What happened with her?”

“I was invited to a dungeon.”

“And?”

“She asked if I could tag along with her and her friends.”

“Ah, I see.”

Orca nodded. He didn’t really get it, but he could tell there was something going on.

“Wait, what? Didn’t you say you don’t give out your member address? When did that change? No way, Balmung, did you contact her yourself?”

Balmung’s expression grew more and more sullen with each question.

“She told me to keep it a secret from you, Orca.”

“……I see.”

“I have no idea what that child is thinking.” Orca had to resist the urge to burst out laughing as Balmung whined about his poor fortunes. “Maybe we should have spoken with Helba after all.”

“Woah, woah! What did you just say?”

Orca looked at Balmung and realized that he was actually being serious.

Balmung had always said he would never step out of line in order to get things done. He must have been under real pressure now to be suggesting this.

“That isn’t like you.”

Knowing his partner’s impatient nature, Orca tried to console him.

“But-”

“Don’t push yourself.”

“You can’t say that, Orca.”

Orca shrugged when Balmung snapped back at him.

However, he did understand his partner’s impatience.

“You don’t have to rely on Helba; you still have that Wavemaster, right?”

So, Orca tried to disguise it as a joke.

“I’m not so sure about that.”

Balmung stiffened his shoulders in annoyance

“We have no reason to assume her information isn’t legit at this point. It’s not a bad plan to take a chance following her lead. It’ll be easier than trying again with Helba.” Balmung didn’t respond for a moment, but then mumbled something Orca didn’t catch. “What was that?”

There was a slight pause, and Orca could see that Balmung was feeling embarrassed.

“I’m not very good at this.”

Balmung confessed, admitting it as if it were some embarrassing nickname.

Needless to say, Orca really did burst out laughing at that.

Then quickly, Orca tries to appease the sullen and soft-spoken Balmung.

“By the way, I found this strange character in Mac Anu the other day.”

“Your sense of humor is bizarre.”

“No, I mean it. They were really strange.”

“……In what way?”

“She was a cat.”

“Huh?”

Balmung raised his eyebrows into a look of scorn.

“A cat-person was sitting on the banks of the canal.”

The World was filled with all kinds of people.

There was always a possibility that such a thing would be included in a future version update, but for now, there were no fairy or beastmen race option for players to choose from in character creation. With the exception of Grunties and Fountain Spirits, the only non-human creatures in the game were the enemy monsters.

“A cheat character?”

“Probably. It could have been an NPC, though; I tried talking to her, but she wouldn’t respond.”

“If it were an NPC, it should be the other way around. An NPC that doesn’t talk would be pointless.”

Tool Smiths, Record Keepers, and the other shopkeepers. Each of the NPCs in charge of the in-game shops will ask for the player’s business and provide explanations for anything when necessary. The only limitation was in the number of dialogue options they had for certain tasks. That was just how they were designed.

“And also, what was it? That grass that’s used as cat toys – the fluffy kind?”

“Aromatic Grass?”

“Yeah, that. She had some.”

“And how does that matter?”

Balmung was having a hard time trying to imagine this strange character that Orca was describing.

“Sorry. It’s kind of difficult to explain.”

Her body was covered in purple and white fur, and her pupils were vertical slits like a cat’s; however, her ears were as tall as a rabbit.

She wore bright green armor the shade of malachite, but it was made of a soft material that conformed to the curves of her body.

She never made eye contact with Orca, and when he spoke to her, she wouldn’t respond. Not only that, but he hadn’t been able to use any items on her. In other words, as far as the system was concerned, she was being treated as no more than an in-game structure like a building or bridge.

“What on earth was it, then?”

“I have no idea.” Orca admitted helplessly. “I thought it was unusual, so I went and stuck around for a whole hour.”

Balmung wanted to say he had too much free time, but he held his tongue.

“And?”

“And that’s it. Nothing happened.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“I know.” Orca nodded in agreement. “But you do have strong character. You have an air of nobility, and I never get tired of watching you work. It’s like being in a pet store and not wanting to leave the play pen, or being at a Takoyaki shop and not wanting to stop eating. No, wait, maybe that’s not a good analogy. In any case, I’m never bored when I’m with you.”

At Orca’s sudden enthusiastic praise, Balmung could only stare at him with a look of utter dismay.

“In the end, I wasn’t able to communicate with her at all, she eventually left, and that was that.”

Orca spoke with a tone of regret.

“Didn’t you try to follow them?”

Balmung suggested, but one look at Orca’s expression told him the answer.

“She was fast. Faster than a Goblin with Ap Do cast on it.”

Orca’s lips quirked up in a rueful smirk.

“That’s concerning.”

“Right?”

“No, that’s not what I mean.” Orca was starting to get excited, but Balmung cut him off. “What does it mean? What would be the point of an NPC that doesn’t speak or try to interact with the players at all?”

“Well, it’s not like there aren’t plenty of more lively NPCs already.”

“Don’t be foolish, Orca.” Balmung snapped at him. “You said so yourself, didn’t you – that they were an unusual character?”

There was no such thing as random chance in The World. Everything that happened or appeared here was created for a pre-planned purpose.

If that cat-like NPC Orca saw wouldn’t take any action at all, then there must have been another agenda behind it.

There must be a reason for it to take no action. A goal that could only be achieved by watching and waiting.

While muttering something to himself, Orca crossed his arms.

“Seems like more of that type have been showing up these days though, like that ‘Aura’ girl, for example.”

“What is CC Corp. thinking?”

Balmung felt a wave of dizziness wash over him.

Because of the nature of online games – outside the interpersonal relationships people built up with one another – a player’s role within the system was always clearly defined.

Fortune and success came as a result of defeating monsters, increasing your stats, and collecting items. While misfortune and failure were defined by being defeated by your enemies and dying.

Despite the shock and regret they might feel as a result of those deaths, every player was given the means and opportunity to overcome any and all obstacles set before them.

And as long as one was willing to put in a certain amount of time and effort, overcoming those obstacles would eventually become a simple matter for them.

Though on the flip side of that, by channeling a player’s anger and regret towards failure into a drive to improve their skills in the game, The World was able to make a business out of it.

Players would eventually get tired of the game if it were too difficult or too punishing.

But a little bit of frustration could be a great motivator to continue playing.

In this case however, what Balmung found himself feeling now was more abstract. He felt a vague sense of unease and anxiety with what was happening around him.

And obviously, those weren’t the kinds of emotions Balmung wanted to feel when playing a game.

Events in The World were always announced in advance in order to get the players excited for them.

But this just made Balmung feel dizzy.

How much of a player’s reactions and feelings could be predicted?

He felt like he was starting to lose control.

“I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.” Orca stated the obvious, leaning forward with a straight face. “We may never find the answers we’re looking for. The only thing we can do for certain is look more closely at the things we can see from our vantage point at the top.”

“Right.”

Balmung nodded in agreement.

“It’s not easy to just sit back and watch, though.”

“That’s true, Orca. Especially for someone like you who likes the hands-on approach.”

At Balmung’s sarcasm, Orca smirked in a way that revealed his devilish intentions.

RE:1020

For the past few days, Takie had begun to notice Junka showing a lack of concentration and signs of irritability.

On the surface, she was clearly trying to act as though everything was normal, but her body language was stiffer, and her expressions always seemed a bit forced.

In addition to that, she was eating even less than usual.

Yesterday, she’d only had half a glass of orange juice for breakfast. And for dinner after school, she had picked up her chopsticks, but didn’t touch anything on her plate. She suspected that her school lunch had likewise gone untouched except for her milk.

She wanted to ask what was wrong, but Takie knew that Junka would not give up the truth so easily.

She wasn’t staying quiet because she thought no one would understand; it was because she didn’t want to worry anyone.

But whether out of concern or respect, Junka seemed to consider her issue something she couldn’t let others find out about. That was why she was forcing herself to act normal. She was trying to erase any sign that she was troubled.

But what could be troubling her to such an extent that she thought she had to hide it?

It almost seemed like she was trying to erase herself from the world entirely.

And when she had that thought, Takie was horrified.

Then not a second later, she heard the sound of shattering glass behind her.

Takie screamed and spun around.

“……I’m sorry.”

Junka stared down at the broken pieces of glass scattered around her feet in dismay.

“I dropped my glass. I was going to get some water.”

“Don’t move. I’ll get the vacuum cleaner.”

Takie moved quickly to get to the storage.

She hadn’t needed to tell Junka that, because she didn’t even try to move away – like a mechanical doll with dead batteries.

Takie sucked up the shards of glass around her and silently wiped the floor with a rag.

Then she motioned for Junka to change out of her wet slippers and made a pot of tea.

“Come on, Jun dear. Let’s have some tea.”

Takie's suggestion sounded almost more like a command, so Junka just nodded and sat back down in her chair.

The refreshing aroma of herbal tea filled the kitchen.

“Drinking all those cold drinks isn’t good for you.”

Takie slid the cup of tea in front of Junka.

Then she watched Junka pick it up and take a sip. After making sure that she had swallowed it properly, Takie let out a quiet sigh of relief.

“How is it? Do you like it?”

“It’s sweet. Did you add sugar?”

“Licorice, actually.”

“Oh,”

Junka stared at the yellow-tinted liquid with fascination.

But she didn’t take another sip.

“Jun dear, have you been eating your sweets?”

“Huh?”

“It doesn’t matter if it’s just potato chips or something, but have you been eating your snacks?”

Junka raised an eyebrow, not sure why her grandmother was asking that question.

“Not too much, I don’t think.”

“No, I’m not asking if you’ve been eating too much of them, I’m asking the opposite this time.”

“The opposite……?”

“I’m worried because you don’t seem to be eating at all recently.”

Junka looked down.

She must really not have been eating. Takie was sure of it now.

When she had broken the glass earlier, it must have been because she got dizzy from the lack of nutrition.

“Why?” Takie watched Junka’s shoulders for any sign of a reaction. “I know you’re only in fifth grade, Jun dear, so this may not apply to you. But girls in their teens and college years – sometimes they don’t eat enough, or at all – and it usually has to do with how they feel about their mothers.”

The other day, Takie had gone to the city library and borrowed a book about eating disorders.

Reading it, she had discovered that there were far more cases of female patients suffering from it than male patients, and that so-called ‘good girls’ were more likely to be affected by it. It had said that a common cause of this disorder could be linked to a bad childhood relationship with one’s mother. However, looking at Junka again now, Takie realized that she didn’t really know anything.

What she was facing now was not a graph or list of statistics, but a real person.

“How do you feel about your mother?”

“How do I feel…?”

“Are you upset?”

“With Mom? Why are you asking me that?” Junka rolled her eyes. “I like Mom. I like her a lot, though I don’t like it when she drinks beer after a bath or when she shouts. I also have a problem with her not closing the bathroom door, but that’s about it.”

Junka chuckled as she recalled these trivial things.

“And that’s all? You’re sure?”

“Grandma, you’re being weird!”

Junka tried to reassure her with a smile.

“You know, a child your age is usually more rebellious, Jun dear.”

“Just because everyone else is like that doesn’t mean I have to be, right? If I was, wouldn’t I just be following the crowd?”

“I know you’re a good girl, Jun dear.”

Takie stressed the words ‘I know’, as if she were berating a spoiled child.

“You make it sound like you want me to act more rebellious, Grandma. I don’t know how I feel about that.”

“It just makes me nervous. I start wondering if it’s actually possible to raise such a good girl.”

Junka snorted out a short laugh.

“Worry is a luxury we can’t afford, Grandma. You should feel proud for having raised me so well.

“Well, you probably wouldn’t remember, but you were a real challenge to take care of before you started elementary school. You were such a feeble child.”

“That’s not really what I meant for you to take pride in.”

“You were constantly sick or injured back then, so you’ll have to take what you can get.”

Caught up in the sudden nostalgia, Takie recounted Junka’s old illnesses and accidents. She couldn’t remember most of them, but there were a few she could.

“For a long time, I thought we didn’t need a man’s help. But regardless of how young you were at the time, you should have been able to hold your own body up for longer than 20 minutes at a time.” She explained, then added, “That was the only time I ever wished we had a man around to help.”

Junka lowered her head while she cradled her teacup in her hands.

Then Takie tucked Junka’s bangs behind her ears to see her face.

“You know Jun dear, the ‘Jun’ in your name actually comes from your father’s name.”

“Huh?” Junka snapped her head up. “But it’s spelt differently, right? His name used the character for ‘pure’, didn’t it?”

“We thought it would be better to alter it a bit rather than leave it the same.”

Takie explained that her name was originally going to be ‘Junko’ using the first character in her father’s name and the second character in her mother’s.

But they eventually decided to use the character for ‘fragrance’ instead, so her name became ‘Junka’.”

“I…”

Takie heard Junka murmur something under her breath.

But she just nodded and continued speaking.

“If there is anything you are unhappy about with your mother, please tell me. Your grandma will take care of it for you.”

“It’s okay, that’s not it.” Junka told her again and looked down. “Really, there’s nothing wrong.” Then she stood up, cup in hand. “Thank you for the tea.”

Junka walked over to the sink and poured out the remaining tea into the sink. The herbal tea – which she had only taken a single sip of – was all sucked down the drain.

“Jun dear.”

“Hmm?”

Junka looked back.

Takie had a soft smile on her face, one that didn’t look fake or forced.

“No, it’s nothing.”

“You’re weird, Grandma.”

Junka gave a short laugh.

But then a second later, that happy expression disappeared like a curtain had been suddenly pulled back.

Those few words were all the denial Junka could muster.

She didn’t even know what she was rejecting, she just felt like she had to deny it.

ME:1060

I started up Altimit OS.

The hexagonal logo spun around, and soon the familiar desktop screen spread out in front of me.

The color of the Mail icon had changed. There was a new message for me.

I stared at it for a minute, but then I decided to delete it.

Alph was the only one who ever sent me e-mails. Bright, cheery Alph.

I was sure her e-mail would just be something trivial. Telling me more about the people she’s met or exchanged member addresses with.

Sometimes I wasn’t sure if I actually liked her or not. I didn’t understand why I hadn’t already cut her off despite finding her as annoying as I do.

All it would have taken was adding her to my blocked list, like I had done for the weird e-mails I found yesterday and the day before that.

If I did that, our relationship with each other was sure to come to an end.

I knew her real name and where she went to school, but I didn’t want to meet her in real life. And I was sure Alph felt the same way.

I opened my contact list, feeling a headache coming on.

And then breath caught in my throat.

One name stood out among the rest in bold.

The e-mail was from Subaru.

The girl with the confidence of someone in command, who took it for granted that others would follow her instructions, yet had a subdued voice that struck my nerves when I’d heard it.

I should have deleted it immediately, but I felt like it would be my loss somehow if I didn’t read it first, so I opened it.

Her sentences were a brief mix of greetings, apologies, compliments, and farewells.

She apologized for not being able to give me the information I was looking for.

She said she couldn’t help feeling self-conscious about how our conversation went.

But nothing she said mattered to me anymore.

The more she apologized, the more irritated I felt. Just like how the more she had asked me for favors, the less motivated I felt to try.

However, there was also a message from Tsukasa included in the e-mail, the player who had been deeply involved with Aura, but wasn’t currently playing The World.

They didn’t have access to the Internet at the time, so the message was sent for them by Subaru.

The former player Tsukasa was concerned about Aura and apologized to me for their inability to help.

But the part that surprised me was that they said they didn’t expect anything from me.

Instead, their message talked about the kind of player they had been and how they used to play the game.

That was it.

They told me that they regret not being able to see things through to the end.

If anyone else had read this, they might have been moved by their words.

But it had nothing to do with me.

I scrolled through the message and stopped at the last sentence.

I hope The World can be of some comfort to you.

I laughed out loud.

As if that was ever going to happen.

And as if I wanted to hear that from someone that had already quit the game.

It hadn’t been a comfort to them, after all. That was why they had run away. I felt like pointing that out to them.

If I went looking for comfort or salvation, I would lose my place in the world.

They were the ones trying to get something out of The World. They were the greedy ones waiting for help.

Not me.

I wasn’t expecting The World to do me any favors.

That was why I would let out my hatred towards it and spread malice.

ME:1061

The sound of birds chirping echoed in the back of my head.

It was an invitation from Alph, but it had an oddly forceful message attached.

I was so frustrated that I hit ‘ACCEPT’ on impulse without really thinking about it.

Then I immediately warped to Lia Fail via the Chaos Gate.

A ruined city hidden deep within a dense tropical forest. Every now and then, the sounds of birds and other animals could be heard beyond the trees, and the sky was dark with storm clouds.

Alph was easily recognizable in her strawberry milk colored outfit. Even more so because she was jumping up and down for me.

But I came to a stop a few meters away from her.

Alph wasn’t alone.

A Blademaster decked out entirely in silver-white armor stood behind her.

“Yoo-hoo!”

Alph’s cheerful voice was as loud as ever.

But the fact that the Blademaster was standing made the tension feel twice as high as usual.

When I didn’t move from my position, Alph shouted as if she was in a hurry.

“Come on, come on! You don’t have to be nervous.”

Who was nervous? I was just sick and tired of all this nonsense.

“Let me introduce you, Carl.”

Alph was practically bursting with excitement as she approached. She was so proud, so boastful, so freaking superior.

“This is Sieg. He came third in the Statue of the God of Time event.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

The armored Blademaster smiled graciously and held out his right hand to me.

It seemed like such a rehearsed gesture; I ignored it completely.

I guess Alph thought I would volunteer my own introduction, but I kept quiet, and Alph rushed to fill the silence.

“And this is Carl. She’s a witness to the ghost incident.”

“Alph told me about that. I heard it was hard on you.”

“What was?”

I asked bluntly.

“Huh……?”

The Blademaster named Sieg clammed up and cleared his throat. “Have you already given up your misconduct, then?”

I silently studied Sieg’s face.

When I wanted to, I could make someone uncomfortable with just a glance.

“I’m sorry. That was rather insensitive of me to say with other PCs around, wasn’t it?”

He glanced around and apologized for missing the point.

“Sieg is worried about you, too. It wouldn’t do any good if Carl got banned. Even you would feel sad if you couldn’t come to The World anymore, right?”

Alph placed a hand on my shoulder reassuringly.

I don’t mean to discourage you from playing that way.” Sieg’s smile widened. “But I think that freedom and responsibility are like two sides of the same coin. You can’t just have one without the other. It’s like with food – you wouldn’t want to just eat plain steak without the sauce or vice versa.”

“So what?”

I growled out a question.

“It’s all a question of degree. Do you understand what I mean by that?”

“No, I don’t understand.”

I answered coldly, and Sieg fell silent, looking uncomfortable.

“Carl, don’t be so pouty.” Alph interjected with an stern expression. She thought I was sulking. “It’s not like Sieg thinks Carl is dumb.”

“I hope I’m not overstepping too much.” Sieg shrugged his shoulders with a wry grin. “But well, since you were Alph’s friend, I thought that I might be able to help.”

I just stayed quiet.

“I don’t think she likes me. I’m not usually the preachy-type.”

“You’re not preachy at all. Carl is just being shy.”

Alph let out a big sigh of relief. It was an exaggerated, almost theatrical gesture.

“Can I go now?”

I couldn’t keep up with these antics anymore.

“Whaaa~!!?” Alph whined. “After coming this far?”

“Stop acting like we’re a couple!”

I shouted.

“Hold on a minute.” But then suddenly, Alph changed her tone of voice and grabbed my arm. “I know I was the one who called you out here, but… Carl, what kind of role are you trying to play at? What kind of character are you supposed to be?”

Alph’s gaze pierced right through me.

I wanted to make some kind of retort, but my lips wouldn’t move to form the words.

“If you want to hack and cheat, that’s fine by me. As long as that’s the kind of character you’re trying to play, I’m sure you’re prepared to pay any penalty if something goes wrong. That’s why you wouldn’t listen whenever I told you not to do it before, right? But you should be more consistent! I don’t want you to get in trouble if you’re not sure about it. Right now, you don’t look like a lone warrior, you just look like a kid.”

I tried to say something.

But Alph stopped me and continued her rant.

“I know we’re not a couple. That would be childish. Do you see? You’re just making an excuse to try and make the problem in front of you go away.” Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Sieg’s eyes flickering between me and Alph. This was catching him off guard, too. “You act like this cool, misanthropic character, but it’s so obvious when something bothers you. It’s pathetic!”

“Wha…”

My voice trailed off.

“You probably think I’m annoying, too, from up on your high horse. Go ahead, look down on me. But at least be consistent about it! Don’t contradict yourself.” Alph fixed me with a cold glare from behind her glasses. “I really didn’t want to have to say all this. In that way, I guess I’m the same as you. But now… if I don’t say it now, you’ll just get the wrong idea again.”

There was none of the usual frivolity in Alph’s voice.

It seemed that the usual, overly friendly, and energetic Alph was performing what she would refer to as a full-blown character break.

“If you’re going to play the villain, then you have to commit to it. You have to know what you’re doing, and be smart about it! That’s why I don’t do it; I don’t want to spend that much effort in a game. But you chose to do that, didn’t you?”

Alph placed her hands on her hips and raised her shoulders.

“Grumpily asking ‘can I go now’ and saying I ‘act like we’re a couple’ – what kind of cliché line is that? You’re acting like a spoiled child. Is that what you want to be?”

“Alph? I think that’s enough…”

Sieg called out in complete shock.

“I’m sorry, Sieg.” Alph apologized sincerely. “I didn’t mean to show you this side of me, but I actually have a really short temper.”

“So it would seem.”

Sieg gave a mollifying laugh.

But Alph didn’t take back the things she had said, so his laughter trickled down and faded away. Then Sieg turned his head to the side as a look of uncertainty came across his face.

“What do you…… Just what is it you want from me?”

I finally got the words out.

“Nothing. I’m not expecting anything from you. You don’t like it when people want things from you, right? All I want is for you to be more self-aware. Aware of the shadow that you cast.”

“And you’re saying you’re aware of yours?”

I tried to beat her back as best I could.

“Yes, I am.”

But Alph would not be intimidated. Instead, she puffed her chest out to show her confidence.

Her tone was much more mature than usual – she was probably imitating her mother – but it was too convincing to be considered false bravado.

“I can see myself – front and back – both online and in real life.”

Her eyes shone with a strong light, and her voice held unwavering conviction.

In the face of that, I couldn’t think of a single thing to say in retort, so I just stayed silent.

RE:1030

A small body was lying on the floor, motionless.

And Junka was staring down at it with a vacant expression. Even though it was right there in front of her, she felt as though she were looking at it through a telescope and just couldn’t grasp the distance.

Behind her, she heard a chair grinding across the floor as it was pushed aside. Then a sharp, bug-like voice filled the room.

“I don’t know!”

The boy – who was the most energetic among Junka’s classmates – was the first to jump up and shout. He was probably trying to appear jovial to lighten the atmosphere, but his attempt failed.

“Teacher! Someone, get the teacher!”

The class representative called out an order to the others.

And right on cue, some of the other students ran out of the classroom.

The uproar grew quickly from there. Some of the neighboring classes came over to take a peek, and when they did, some became hysterical and started crying.

However, no one would touch the boy who was lying on the ground barely one meter in front of Junka.

It was like everyone was afraid of being infected by some kind of disease.

In the few minutes before the homeroom teacher arrived, Junka found herself calmly observing her surroundings.

The first to burst into tears had been an annoying girl who was always clinging to the homeroom teacher and had a nasally voice, while the class representative’s cheeks were flushed, and she seemed agitated by all the drama.

Between crying and calmly assessing the situation, the fifth-grade girls reacted in a much more diverse way than the boys.

The boys didn’t seem to be able to do more than just joke or look dumb.

And Junka looked at all of them like they were strangers.

A few moments later, the homeroom teacher finally came running in.

She caught sight of the limp unconscious boy and gasped.

The boy’s arms and legs were splayed out around him, and he was lying facing down against the floor.

“Shindo?”

The homeroom teacher rushed to the boy’s side, gently picked him up and turned him over onto his back.

At that moment, the boy finally let out a short scream. Then he clutched his forehead and scrunched his face in pain.

Eventually, he let out a long, shaky breath and slowly looked up.

Leaning his head back, he moved his gaze around. And when his eyes fell on Junka, he looked uncomfortable.

“Are you alright? Do you feel sick or nauseous?”

The boy shook his head quietly in response to the homeroom teacher’s rapid-fire questions with one hand on his forehead. He struggled to stand up, and removed himself from the teacher’s arms.

“Nimura pushed Shindo.”

One girl pointed at Junka.

“She pushed him?”

But when the homeroom teacher questioned her, the girl just started crying again, like someone had flipped a switch on her.

“Is that true, Nimura?”

The homeroom teacher looked at Junka for the first time.

All of the children who had run to the staff room had no idea what was going on, only that a boy had collapsed.

“It’s true.”

Junka answered with a flat voice, and her homeroom teacher’s eyes widened in a look of shock.

In her mind, Junka was a quiet and easy to handle student, not a student who would answer in the callous way she had just now.

“What’s going on? You aren’t the kind of girl who would do something like that for no reason, are you Nimura?”

Junka did not answer.

The homeroom teacher looked to the boy in confusion. A bump was forming on the left side of his forehead.

“Let’s go to the infirmary. Nimura, come with me.”

This one time, she was being reminded to be good.

The cause had been something else.

The boy had wanted to know about Junka’s family.

For someone who had grown up in a family where his father was a businessman and his mother was a housewife, it seemed unusual to him that Junka’s mother was a doctor.

And why she didn’t have a father was another innocent question that he wanted to ask.

“Did your parents get divorced?”

From his perspective, it was a rare experience like bungee jumping or whitewater rafting, so it was something interesting worth talking about.

“When? And how come?”

If I weren’t experiencing it myself, I would have no idea how much pain comes from growing up as part of a broken family.

Or rather, it simply wouldn’t be possible for me to feel the same pain as them.

The boy wasn’t being completely insensitive, though. Rather than talk about it behind her back like girls often would, he decided to be more polite and asked her about it directly.

“Did they have clashing personalities? Or did they not have the same values? Was it something like that?”

He leaned over her desk and used terms he’d probably just heard his own parents use without knowing what they meant.

“I don’t know.”

“Really? How is that possible? Come on, you have to know why.”

The boy shook Junka’s desk with his whole body.

“They broke up a long time ago.”

“What do you mean?”

Junka wanted to get away from here as soon as possible.

But she also knew that this boy would not go away until he had satisfied his curiosity.

“It happened before I was born.”

“Before you were born?”

He sounded like he was getting excited for some reason.

The girls who were talking by the window turned around to see what he was getting all uppity about.

“That’s crazy! So, you’re an orphan!?”

“No.”

Junka turned her head down to try and hide her disgust at his conclusion.

She noticed a bit of dirt on her left slipper over the pinky toe. She would have to bring them home to wash over the weekend.

“Then, what happened?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“Because no one else has divorced parents; you’re the only one.”

The boy spoke with such confidence.

“I don’t think it’s anything that special.”

“Wow! Nimura, you’re so cool!”

The fact that she knew he wasn’t teasing her and actually meant that made Junka’s heart race just a bit.

“Then, what’s your dad doing now?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why not!? He’s still alive, right?”

The boy moved his face closer with rising interest.

“I’ve never met him before.”

“Never? He doesn’t even call?”

“No.”

“That’s weird!!”

He shouted.

“How can you be sure you even really have a dad, then?”

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

Junka struggled to hide her growing irritation and tried to get up from her chair.

“What’s wrong? I still…”

The boy wasn’t done asking questions yet. He leaned forward, reaching for Junka.

And she knocked his hand away on reflex.

To the others around them, it must have looked like Junka had pushed him.

The boy lost his balance and fell onto the desk, hitting his head on the corner with a heavy thud.

The faint smell of disinfectant permeated the nurse’s office while the chime of the dismissal bell echoed through the school.

The sky was shifting into an unsettling dusk.

And Junka just kept staring at the dirt on her slipper.

“This isn’t like you, Nimura.”

Her homeroom teacher sighed in relief.

Fortunately, the boy had not complained about feeling nausea or pain in the back of his head. Apart from the bump on his forehead, he seemed to be okay.

“Nimura, apologize to Shindo. This could have been much worse than it was.”

She pushed Junka in front of the boy who had a large cold pack held against his forehead.

However, Junka would not move from where she stood.

“Nimura?”

“I don’t want to.”

Junka refused outright.

“What?”

Her homeroom teacher was confused by her response. Even though she had definitely heard her, she couldn’t immediately believe what had been said.

“I won’t apologize.”

“Nimura!”

Her homeroom teacher raised her voice in frustration.

Junka pursed her lips and looked up at her.

“Yes, ma’am.”

The boy tried to get up from his stool. “It’s fine, I’m alright.”

However, instead of diffusing her frustration, the boy’s words tempered the homeroom teacher’s desire to see justice carried out.

She turned to Junka with a look of resolve. She was going to force Junka to admit she was wrong and apologize.

“Nimura, you think you haven’t done anything wrong, don’t you? You have.”

Using all the strength she could muster, Junka refused to move.

Her homeroom teacher scowled and tried phrasing it as an accusation.

“You are in trouble. I didn’t think you were this kind of girl, Nimura. Moreover……”

“I am that kind of girl.”

Junka made that declaration and turned her back on her stunned homeroom teacher.

Then she opened the door and left the infirmary.

A second later, her homeroom teacher came to her senses and called out for Junka, but didn’t chase after her, and she didn’t stop, either.

Junka walked down the hallway to her classroom, and then she noticed a tingling sensation in her left-hand little finger.

She looked down, and her heart nearly stopped as she realized that her finger was bleeding.

It must have been from pushing that boy away.

Junka held the bloody finger to her mouth, tasting iron and dust.

And when she opened the classroom door, Junka was met by the gazes of all her classmates.

They weren’t sure if they should accept her back since she had returned alone.

Junka returned to her seat and began preparing to leave.

“Where are Shindo and the teacher?”

The class representative asked Junka a pointed question.

“The infirmary.”

Junka answered quickly, and the girl’s shoulders stiffened. Still, she couldn’t let go of her curiosity and stepped closer.

“It’s fine. You can go back, Nimura.”

“Shut up.”

Junka muttered.

The girl’s expression wavered for a moment, and then gave Junka an ugly, forced smile.

“You know, you’re scary Nimura.”

Junka ignored the girl and stuffed her textbook into her bag. Then she put the back on her back and faced the girl one last time.

She had a nasty smile stretching over her face. She was aware of the crowd listening in behind her, but her expression betrayed her desire to finish this quickly and bask in the victory of pushing Junka away.

“You’re going home? Why?”

Junka closely examined the girl’s face.

Even though she was frightened and blinked quickly, she did not break eye contact with Junka. And Junka continued to stare back with a blank expression devoid of emotion.

“……What?”

The girl clammed up and her face went beet red. Sweat dripped under her nose, and her black hair looked scraggly, like a beard.

Junka turned away from her.

And started to walk away.

Passed all of her classmates.

Neither the class representative nor the well-behaved boy said a word as Junka stepped around them to get by.

Then at the entrance, she paused when she bent down to take off her slippers.

She realized that there was no need to wait until Friday anymore. She could just bring them home now.

Feeling oddly free, Junka stepped out onto the pavement in her slippers.

RE:1031

What kind of person was her father?

Junka had grown up not knowing anything about him.

But it wasn’t technically a secret, either.

Both Kyoko and Takie would answer Junka’s questions honestly when she asked.

But that didn’t change the fact that Junka knew next to nothing about her father – referred to only as ‘Mr. T’.

Her father’s full name was Junichiro Tokuoka.

He worked for a computer company.

Apparently, he met Kyoko when he was in a car accident and broke his leg.

Kyoko had been Tokuoka’s doctor.

Patients often brought in their computers and papers, took advantage of their private rooms, and refused to follow hospital procedure at all.

Tokuoka would leave his room unannounced on crutches without a care in the world.

He smoked in his hospital room and desperately tried to hide the traces of his cigarettes like a high school student. However, the smell would always give him away.

In a word, he was rather problematic.

Yet somehow, his private room became a hangout for all manner of patients.

Not only was he popular among the patients, but among the nurses as well.

Tokuoka – who wasn’t very handsome, and could go a few days before needing to shave – became the subject of rumors among the nurses, as he seemed to be a workaholic that earned quite a high salary.

One reason was that Tokuoka had an easy-going personality and a never-ending pool of things to talk about. And another was that he never berated or yelled at the nurses.

Many patients would use their injuries or illnesses as an excuse for rude behavior. Even if it was due to anxiety or pain, there were still those that simply took it too far. The nurses took the brunt of this abuse, being constantly exposed to the patients’ negative emotions.

Tokuoka was the only one who seemed to enjoy the inconvenience of being in the hospital.

Kyoko had a hard time dealing with Tokuoka as his doctor, but she didn’t have a bad impression of him as a person.

During his month-long stay at the hospital, Tokuoka deepened his understanding on the difference between plastic surgery and orthopedics, while teaching Kyoko about the possible dangers of online communities.

And when he was discharged from the hospital, they exchanged their e-mail addresses, promising to meet again.

From there, their relationship as doctor and patient soon developed into that of lovers.

Around that time, Kyoko began talking about Mr. T in her conversations with Takie.

Kyoko made fun of Tokuoka for wearing sandals in winter and being slightly overweight thanks to his lifestyle, even trying to forbid him from drinking canned coffee every day out of concern for his health.

Meanwhile, Tokuoka would refer to Kyoko as his ‘teacher’, claiming she was more daring and relaxed than he was, yet when they walked down the sidewalk together, he’d be the one casually standing on the side of the road.

They argued plenty over political situations and movies, but never discussed their tastes and proclivities.

Within three months of Tokuoka being released from the hospital, he and Kyoko had begun thinking about marriage.

However, Tokuoka stubbornly refused to hold a wedding ceremony, saying he was too embarrassed and didn’t want to be bound by tradition. He didn’t even give Kyoko an engagement ring.

Kyoko agreed, and Takie tolerated the decision with a forced smile.

Due to his busy schedule, however, Tokuoka only returned to Kyoko’s home in Mitaka a few times a month at the start of their marriage, and had a rented one-room apartment near the CC Corp. office that he walked to work from.

And as his workload grew, he began to spend even more time sleeping at the office, his only spare moments spent commuting between his apartment and office.

It could still work out as long as there was a sense of curiosity and newness in how they looked at their spouse.

However, marriage was supposed to be a daily routine, a way of life.

They were letting temporary excitement become ordinary, and discovery became common place.

Mediocrity and quiet times were necessary to allow those moments to truly shine.

But they had too little time and space to spend together for that to happen.

They didn’t even have enough time to get into a fight. The ideal would have been to forge a stronger bond like hammering iron into shape, but their reality was that the ingot they had was being left to cool without being worked on.

It was difficult for Tokuoka and Kyoko to find a way to reconcile their work lives to fit in with each other.

Kyoko had her patients, and Tokuoka had a game called Fragment to import.

Within a year, the two of them had to sit down with each other and rethink their way of life.

When they could get together, they expected too much from each other, and that led to them feeling discouraged.

If that was how it would be between them, then it was better for both of them if they returned to being strangers.

Some relationships could be maintained long-distance with enough effort.

But they were both in agreement.

In many ways, they were too similar. That had been what attracted them to each other, but in the end, it was also why they decided to break it off.

One had to be considerate of others, not just their own ego.

Or at the very least – one needed to trust their own instincts.

It was only after the divorce that Kyoko had discovered she was pregnant.

Was it lucky or unlucky? Either way, it was useless to think about it now.

Even after parting, the two sometimes contacted each other at least once or twice a month.

Kyoko knew that Tokuoka had become even busier than before, so she only gave him a cursory report about their child. She didn’t want to interrupt his work by talking about something depressing.

In return, Tokuoka inquired about Kyoko’s health and offered advice about her intent to recognize him for child support.

After a minimal amount of negotiation, Tokuoka’s position in regard to their unborn child was decided.

The name would be a combination of their own. He would provide a monthly remittance of ¥150,000. And he would have the right to visit her whenever he wanted.

Yet while those first two expectations were honored, the last right was never exercised.

And Kyoko had no time to complain about Tokuoka’s reluctance to visit his child.

Raising a child required so much time and effort. She had returned to work after three months of maternity leave as well, so Kyoko was even busier than before.

The stormy days passed, but it wasn’t until Junka started elementary school that Kyoko realized she hadn’t been in touch with Tokuoka in over half a year.

Perhaps that had been an opportunity. If Kyoko had allowed Tokuoka to meet up with Junka then, the relationship between the father and daughter might have been different.

But in the end, it was only after the entrance ceremony that Kyoko contacted him. She sent him a colored photo of Junka standing stiffly beside the school gate, and Tokuoka sent her a letter of congratulations in response.

The moment had passed quickly.

And the days continued unchanged.

To Junka, Tokuoka was her father only in concept.

She didn’t know what he looked like, and she had never once lived with him.

What was a father supposed to do? How was he supposed to act? What does he think about? Junka could only use her imagination based on what little she knew.

A fantasy of the perfect father. Or a vision of spite.

It wasn’t until she was in third grade that Junka learned her father worked as a programmer.

And that was when The World was first brought to Junka’s attention.

A game created by her father.

It was the first piece of her father that Junka had ever had.

Junka had been thrilled the first time she logged into The World.

But it could not meet Junka’s expectations.

In Junka’s fantasy, there should have been an existence there that held and guided her through everything. But instead, every turn in The World only brought Junka new opposition.

She was systematically rejected, humiliated, and devoured.

It would have been fine if she could have simply dismissed the PKing and stalking as ‘just part of the game’.

However, Junka was too emotionally invested in The World to do that.

The hurt she felt from her treatment in The World – to her – was no different than if it were happening in real life. Yet in contrast, it was not an issue she could fix in real life.

Junka became filled with disappointment and pain.

She wondered if she should have just stopped logging in.

But Junka naïvely clung to The World anyways. She was hooked on it.

She didn’t want to leave without being completely rejected by it – without being thoroughly crushed by it.

She wanted to be acknowledged.

She wanted him to know that she was here.

The father that was still little more than a figment of her imagination.

She gritted her teeth and fought back the pain as she once again landed in The World.

It wasn’t healthy for her to be putting her heart and soul into this game like she was.

After all, it was still just a game. There was nothing to be gained from it but a temporary sense of accomplishment and satisfaction.

Junka had confused reality and the online world in the worst possible way.

There was no way to satisfy a real life need on the Internet.

It could only be obtained in reality.

And then she was PKed again.

For the first time, Junka had complained to Kyoko. She asked why Tokuoka would create a game that allowed people to kill each other.

Kyoko wasn’t familiar with the game, so she couldn’t give her a proper answer. And even if she could have, it would have done nothing to console Junka.

Maybe he thought it would be more interesting that way. Perhaps games were just like real life, where anything was possible. But she shouldn’t let it hurt her feelings. Instead, she should try to laugh the rude players off.

Anything she said would surely have sounded hollow.

Feeling desperate, Junka called CC Corp. directly and gave a scathing review.

But she was told that the employee named Junichiro Tokuoka was no longer with CC Corp.

Yet when Junka asked her mother again, Kyoko seemed puzzled. She didn’t seem to understand what Junka found so shocking about Tokuoka leaving the company.

Kyoko offered to get in touch with Tokuoka if she wanted to see him, but Junka shook her head.

It was too late now.

Junka had already reached her verdict.

Tokuoka had left the company just after completing the conversion for The World. And no one knew why.

His colleagues and subordinates were all surprised and dejected over it. Some even accused him of betrayal because of how much it had hurt to see him leave.

Tokuoka had not confided with anyone his reasons for leaving, he had only said that he was tired.

Whether Tokuoka quit after having finished his project or collapsed in the middle of his life’s work – no one could say. Passed the conversion itself, any future updates would have just been more work, and all of it would have necessitated Tokuoka’s presence.

But either way, the fact remained that when Junka logged into The World now, Tokuoka would not be there.

The piece of her father she’d believed she finally had was nothing but an illusion.

Junka was torn away from her online fantasy and thrust back into reality.

If Tokuoka had left The World behind, why then had he not returned to his family in the real world?

Kyoko had told Junka that Tokuoka was busy with work.

But as far as Junka knew, the reason Tokuoka had left and never visited was all because of his work on The World.

That had been why Junka tried to follow him into The World.

She had wanted to know and to love The World.

But her dream had been torn asunder.

Junka felt like she was drowning in a sea of emptiness and despair.

She struggled, fought back, and replaced her desire for connection with hatred.

The World was a load of garbage.

The World held no purpose.

The users happily enjoying their time in the game were completely different people from Junka.

They were all idiots. Each one just playing pretend.

She would show them. Show them all what a terrible world this really was.

Junka – Carl – wore a mask of ice.

ME:1070

I once saw a documentary on TV about a child with a disease called paresthesia.

Since the disease numbed a person’s senses, I thought that must mean they could endure any kind of pain or suffering, no matter how severe. But because children with this illness wouldn’t even notice their own injuries, as living beings, they were actually much weaker than normal people.

Their wounds healed much slower because they don’t feel the pain and sometimes leave the injury untreated. And sometimes, by the time they do notice, it would already be too late.

It was a strange, slow, but deadly disease.

But in a room covered in urethane and Styrofoam, one of these children was playing happily. He was running around throwing a ball while his fingers and forehead were covered in bandages.

The smile on his face was genuine, but I couldn’t tell if that was because of his lack of pain or in spite of it.

I’m sure I must have been smiling as I watched him on the documentary, too, though I doubt anyone would have been able to tell.

Once more, I dove down into The World. No, it was more like I was falling into it.

To a world that was neither fun nor pleasant.

But this time, I didn’t experience the headaches that usually plague me here.

Instead, everything seemed indistinct around me. The feeling in my fingertips and the scenery in front of me all felt very far away from me now.

I walked into Mac Anu with a vague sense of unease in my heart.

The babbling of the canal was the same as always, but there were more people than usual. As I stood on the cobblestones, PCs passed me by one after the other.

They each wore a different outfit and held different weapons. They had different faces, hairstyles, and were all dyed a variety of colors.

I suddenly realized that there were far more than just the twenty options from character creation. Even if they looked similar, there were as many designs as there were players.

Dozen or even hundreds of players controlled the crowd that was moving in the background.

People in their rooms or Internet Cafés, wearing FMDs and holding controllers.

I felt a sting of bitterness rise in my throat. I realized that each of the PCs were connected to their players through a cable – like babies to an umbilical cord.

Every PC had at least one living person attached to it.

And each of those people had a face, a name, and could feel pain.

I smelled a phantom odor.

The smell of freshly sliced meat, of white kettle corn, and of eggs floating in a pot. Those scents all hit me along with the steam of the city. It was the smell of things baking, frying, and boiling.

I turned my back on the city and ran to the Chaos Gate.

I needed to be alone.

I needed a place where I could hide.

A place where no one could find me. To the deepest depths of the net. <To Hidden Forbidden Holy Ground>.

ME:1071

I flinched as I stepped into the center of the Cathedral.

My head felt number, and I started to examine my surroundings.

I could sense someone’s presence near me. It was a vague sensation – like catching the last ripple on the surface of a pond before it had fully settled, or hearing the last echoes of a cymbal crash before silence returned.

My breathing became shallow.

Was this some kind of an ill omen?

Even if it was, it didn’t stop me from walking towards the altar. It felt like I was being pulled in.

There was someone huddled quietly behind it.

He was sitting with one leg folded over the other.

And he was hunched over, so I couldn’t see his face.

But he had a cloak wrapped tightly around his arms and shoulders as if to protect him from the cold.

Suddenly, it felt like my body was being weighed down by heavy metal armor. I couldn’t move a muscle; I could only stare at the person in front of me.

I tried to say something, but my throat suddenly felt completely dry.

I couldn’t blink, and tears started to sting at the corner of my eyes.

“……Sora?”

I finally managed to force my voice out.

But Sora didn’t react to me, like he hadn’t even heard me.

I called his name again, louder this time.

And my voice cracked despite my best efforts to maintain composure.

Again, Sora didn’t move.

He might just be pretending not to have heard me.

Because otherwise, there was no way he wouldn’t have noticed me call to him twice.

A huge lump grew in my throat, and I realized that I was about to cry.

I tried to hold it back, but my breath was already catching in my throat.

Was I really about to cry?

But for the first time, I actually wanted to cry. I’d thought my tears were all dried up, but it turned out they weren’t.

And that was when it happened.

Sora whimpered.

Then, as if being pulled along by some invisible strings, his body was lifted up.

He rose so high that I flinched in reaction.

Slowly, he turned his eyes towards me.

He had a smile on his face, his lips curling wide at the edges.

My whole body froze.

His grin looked like it had been carved into place.

“Who……?”

My voice was still trembling.

And then, Sora laughed under his breath.

But it wasn’t a human laugh that I heard. It had a low, grating quality to it – like rocks grinding against each other.

A chill ran down my spine.

This Sora was not the Sora that I knew.

It wasn’t a matter of them being an imposter wearing a disguise.

It was like a moth mimicking a flower or a deep-sea fish hiding between the rocks waiting to get the jump on their prey – this thing was evil.

It looked like Sora, but it was not Sora. It was something entirely different.

The laughter stopped and that Thing stood up like it was being pushed and pulled at the same time.

And then it jumped high.

It leapt with inhuman strength.

It was an impossible jump, even here in The World.

This was a world of swords and sorcery based on the epic poem – the Epitaph of Twilight – but there was still a floor. Unless a PC had special equipment, powerful items, or magic, they were still bound by the laws of gravity.

But that Thing jumped incredibly high and then just hung in the air for a moment, standing upside down.

Then it kicked off the air and dashed towards me.

I screamed. I saw something like veins rising up between the bandages covering his body and head, and they were glowing.

It held its arms wide, reaching much farther than a humans could.

They stretched out and flew towards me like snakes.

“Stop!”

I couldn’t help but scream when I saw Sora’s eyes glowing with killing intent.

But there was no way it would stop.

Without hesitation, that Thing whipped its arm down and slammed me into the wall.

My vision went spinning, and for a moment I felt so disoriented I couldn’t even tell where I really was.

The stone floor that usually blurred out of focus when I looked too closely was for some reason crystal clear now, almost as if it were real.

Carl was the one falling, so why did it feel like Junka was falling at the same time?

And why could I actually smell the dust in the air?

I didn’t even get a moment to think about it.

That Thing struck me again.

I didn’t have time to catch my breath.

Not just in the game – for real.

That Thing jumped high again and dropped down on top of me with all the weight of its body behind it.

It grabbed me by the hair, and I squirmed in its grasp.

My throat and chest were left exposed, and tears stung at my eyes from the humiliation.

I looked passed that Thing’s bangs to its eyes, but its face was completely expressionless.

It felt no satisfaction in tormenting me like this. It didn’t care about achieving a victory here. It was just carrying out a task.

“Don’t do this! Please…… Sora!”

If he hated me, then he could hate me all he wanted to.

If he didn’t want me around, that was fine.

But if he was going to kill me, I wanted him to at least recognize me.

Why?

Why had he forgotten me?

Did he really not remember me?

Or had he never really cared in the first place?

Did I not deserve to be remembered by Sora?

“Sora……!!”

That Thing just grabbed me by the chest and lifted me up.

Its red sash waved gently in the air.

It slammed me mercilessly against the floor, and I stopped breathing for a moment. I tried to draw in air, but it was no use.

Its shadow loomed over me.

“I don’t…”

I finally burst into tears.

I tried to hide my face.

But my arm was kicked away.

Then it kicked me in the side, back, and both my legs one after another until I was left in a heap on the floor.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry……”

I apologized profusely.

I finally knew that I didn’t belong here.

I was completely unnecessary.

I just wanted to disappear. But I was still here, getting in the way and making things worse.

I couldn’t feel my limbs, they just dangled uselessly from my sides.

My vision blurred.

I recoiled from the pain.

“O………o…ra……”

My voice sounded like crunching paper.

All I could do was try to be louder, until it sounded more like a beast’s wailings than a person.

It was a sound of desperation and fear, completely devoid of hope.

I had heard this sound once before.

A pearlescent light entered my vision.

Yes, that was right.

I lifted my gaze.

And saw a young girl floating in the air.

She had loose, wavy hair and soft, round features. However, she had a look of confusion on her face this time.

That Thing which had once been Sora craned its neck up and let out a venomous hiss.

“Stop!”

I screamed.

Was I screaming at Sora? Or was it Aura?

For that matter, just what the hell was I even trying to stop, anyways?

Sora’s screams became even more intense.

His body swelled, and his presence grew even fiercer.

“Get away from me!”

This time, I was definitely screaming at Aura.

But at the same time, Sora ran towards Aura.

The patterns on his body grew even brighter and more vivid.

For the briefest moment, I forgot how to breathe as I admired the beauty and misery of the sight.

Sora raised his arm. I saw a glimmer of power forming there, and it definitely wasn’t a force for good.

It was a force for evil.

And the brunt of that power was being directed at Aura.

Hatred. Fear. A plethora of negative emotions gathered in Sora’s arm.

My voice would not stop this Sora. I had no power here.

Yet Aura took the attack with a calm expression like the surface of an undisturbed pond. She showed no sign of pain or any other emotion. And then there was an explosion of light.

Space distorted. My senses were assaulted by a blast of colors and sounds that my mind couldn’t even comprehend.

I hunched over, shut my eyes, and covered my ears to try and endure it all.

But then I quickly thought better of it and straightened back up.

“Sora!”

Aura was lying on the floor in front of me.

She was curled up in a pile like a dead cat on the side of the road after being hit by a car.

Why?

I blinked dumbly at the sight of her.

Why was Aura – who was so powerful and capable of incredible things – lying on the floor.

Aura bolted upright.

Her eyes peeked out from behind her now tangled up hair stuck to her face.

After all of that, her gaze was still as calm as ever.

“Ah…”

I saw her.

I finally understood.

Aura was a child who didn’t know anything.

A child who did not understand the concepts of good or bad, or the feeling of either pain or joy.

A saw a flash of lightning out of the corner of my eye.

Sora’s appearance was changing again. His limbs adapted a stone-like texture, growing thicker and longer.

The only thing left that reminded me this Thing had once been Sora was its eyes. But even those eyes were almost completely overtaken with a mixture of pain, emptiness, and pleasure.

Stop it! Please, stop it!”

I shouted for Sora.

I wasn’t trying to protect Aura.

Right now, I was still jealous. I was still jealous of Aura.

It was a raging jealousy so fierce that I felt like it might burn me with its own intensity.

And I was jealous of her because her existence was able to infuriate Sora so completely like this.

I couldn’t have done anything like that.

When it came to Aura, Sora could express his true emotions.

They had a bond that connected them that way.

Even if it was born of malice and hostility, it was still real. And I was so envious of that connection. Even though he was trying to kill her, I was jealous.

And I hated it.

“Why!? ……Why did you come here!?”

With venom in my voice, I screamed out at Aura.

Aura opened her mouth slightly.

“……Be……cause…”

I couldn’t hear her.

I had no idea what Aura was trying to tell me.

No. Actually, I did know.

But I didn’t want to admit it.

Behind her, Sora’s body continued to swell.

The wind roared around us and it felt like my blood was on fire.

His power – his killing intent – struck through Aura.

And once again, Aura just stood there and took it.

She flew backwards like a discarded doll. Her body spun through the air and then landed on the floor with a thud.

Sora’s laugh was deafening.

I stared at Aura lying on the floor.

She wasn’t crying even now. She couldn’t. She could barely even lift a finger.

“Why!? You can just run away again…… can’t you!?”

I screamed at Aura again. “You can do anything! You have that kind of power!”

Aura moved her head. She turned to face me; one cheek covered by her hair.

The line of her jaw moved as she tried to say something to me.

I listened to Aura’s voice.

It was faint, yet confident.

“Because then Carl…… would be sad.”

Stop that!

I didn’t want to hear that! I didn’t want you to say anything!

I opened my mouth to scream. I tried desperately to scream.

But my voice was trapped in my throat and my tongue was stuck to the roof of my mouth. I was about to get swept away in a wave of panic.

My breaths came in ragged fits.

“Why?”

I forced my hoarse voice out through gritted teeth and tried to identify what I was feeling.

Hatred. Repulsion. Confusion. Disgust. Like I was chewing on sand.

I raised a hand to my throat.

I shuddered and took in a deep breath that sounded like a whistle.

“I am not…… I am not sad!”

I sounded like a crying child.

I didn’t want to be pitied.

I didn’t want anyone protecting me or showing me kindness.

So, I screamed.

Because I believed that the more I screamed, the stronger I would be.

But really, it was the opposite.

I was like a driver who’d driven into the sea. As they ran out of oxygen, they would lose all sense of direction. They’d keep struggling and searching for light and air, only to end up diving deeper into the dark, unforgiving ocean.

“Sora!”

But I still screamed out his name with all the strength and willpower I could muster.

ME:1072

The wind picked up again.

I heard the sound of rocked grinding against the marble floor.

I looked up at that Thing.

In my vision clouded by pain and envy, I saw the figures of Aura and Sora.

Aura was huddled in a ball, her body trembling, and Sora stood above her while surveying the area as if trying to make sure his presence was recognized.

“Ah…”

I gasped.

A spark of inspiration hit me.

This – this scene was flipped from how it had been last time.

Last time, Sora had been the one in pain. He had been trembling then just like Aura was trembling now.

The two of them opposed each other.

Like two magnets pushing against each other, they were destined to repel one another.

Aura – appearing as a frail little girl. And Sora – as a dangerous, violent, abominable monster. They were nothing alike, and yet at the same time, extremely similar.

They were both suffering, both hurting, and both so very fragile.

“…urh…”

Sora made a guttural noise.

The foot he had set on the floor staggered suddenly.

The patterns of light covering his body flickered for a moment like the flame of a furnace being buffeted by the wind.

“Sora?”

I felt like I was being drawn in.

But then in the next moment, I was being thrown against the wall with a roar.

I crumpled to the floor and my vision blurred again, but I still stood back up.

Sora’s form suddenly looked unstable.

He had a puzzled look in his eyes as he looked down at Aura.

“Sora!”

At the sound of my voice, Sora’s shoulders seemed to flinch in reaction.

It might have just been my imagination. I may have been trying to convince myself of something that wasn’t there.

I wanted him to respond to my voice, so maybe I was just seeing what I wanted to see.

I steadied myself against the wall and slowly lifted myself up.

In the silent cathedral, the only sounds left were my breathing and the rustling of my clothes, which seemed deafening to my ears now.

“……Aaaaa…”

It sounded like Sora was having to force his voice out of his throat.

He moved slowly, awkwardly, and turned his head towards me.

He was covered in gray stones. Ominous patterns of light flickered in and out between the cracks. His arms were huge and misshapen.

But even in that state, Sora was still Sora.

My precious Sora.

“…Aura……”

“Right.”

I nodded to him.

“Carl.”

“Right.”

Sora started mumbling my name over and over again.

Like he was trying to learn a word in another language for the first time.

“Carl.”

“Sora.”

I repeated his name until I lost count of how many times I’d said it.

And yet even then, every time I said it, I felt happy.

Even at a time like this.

――No matter what was happening.

Sora lifted his arms awkwardly and held them out towards me.

There was a glimmer of light in Sora’s eyes now.

“Please……”

‘Please help me.’

‘Please stop me.’

I didn’t know which he was asking me to do, or if it could be something completely different from either of those.

Sora’s plea felt more like a prayer than a request. That much I understood.

I bit down on my lip and tasted the metallic tang of blood on my tongue, then looked to Aura.

Her body – draped in pearlescent clothing – didn’t seem to be moving anymore.

Almost as if she were already――.

A sense of terror rose up from deep within me, shaking me to my core.

Sora wanted to kill Aura.

Sora wanted to save Aura.

Those two desires were fighting for dominance within Sora’s mind.

He was struggling against it, and it was torturing him.

I looked at Aura.

I looked at Sora.

Sora’s arm fell off his body as if the thread holding it up had been cut.

At the same time, a howl echoed through the Cathedral. I ran towards Aura so fast my vision blurred again.

I grabbed her small body and checked for any signs of life.

Oh, how fragile she looked.

She was so small I could cradle her entire body in my arms.

And without any difficulty, I picked her up.

Aura’s forehead rested against my shoulder.

Sora’s eyes flashed with fury, and a threatening roar escaped his throat.

A wave of killing intent washed over me.

I put all of my strength into holding onto Aura.

And I glared back at Sora.

“It’s okay. Come on.”

I was speaking to myself.

How――pleasant.

I felt a power filling me up.

But I couldn’t contain it all and screamed. But my scream sounded more like the howl of a beast than a person.

I wouldn’t let Sora kill Aura.

I would protect Aura.

Not for her sake, but my own. I would protect Aura.

Sora sensed the great power that was building within my body.

A thrilling surge of pleasure raced down my spine.

“Sora! Chase after me!”

I shouted to him, and then I leapt.

Afterword

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What color do you think the world is?

Can you see it?

Is it perfect?

Is it too much?

Does it tickle?

Does it itch?

Is it sour?

Is it sweet?

How tall are you?

Are you working hard?

Is it difficult for you?

Are you tired?

Are you in a hurry?

Are you happy?

Did you like it?

Did you hate it?

Is that the truth?

Is this real?

Is this fake?

Is this all a dream?

What is a dream?

Can you remember the magic words?

~Yokote Michiko

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