However, it wasn’t the kind of dream that he’d seen countless times until now which he regretted not being able to record[3]. Rather, it could be called the exact opposite.
In the dream, Kuroyukihime wasn’t in her true form, but in her school avatar form with black swallowtail butterfly wings on her back. The lace-decorated hem of her likewise black dress fluttered, and she dashed lightly between the trees within a deep forest.
Haruyuki was also in his pink pig avatar form, and moved his short feet desperately as he chased after the black butterfly. The fairy princess gradually went further and further away from him while softly half-flying, even while extending out her right hand as if beckoning to him.
—Senpai!
Haruyuki’s shouting voice was tinged with a strange echo that resounded through the bottom of the forest.
—Please wait, senpai!
But Kuroyukihime’s feet didn’t stop. Sometimes she would look over her shoulder and give a mysterious smile on her red lips, but her form would quickly be obstructed by a large moss-covered trunk. Eventually, Haruyuki could only see the ruby-colored pattern that colored her jet-black wings. That radiance which flickered like a blaze also melted into the dim light very quickly.
—Please don’t leave me. Please…Please don’t abandon me.
Though he cried that out, there was no response.
—Because my wings disappeared. That’s why you’re abandoning me? You don’t need me anymore?
No response.
Suddenly, a point on his back hurt with a sting. It quickly gained substance and squirmed intensely.
*ZURURI* He felt something pierce through his avatar from the inside. It wasn’t wings. Something like a darkened, long and narrow tail grew out from his back. It surged into the air, raised its snaky-form over his shoulders—and then extended straight ahead like a spear.
A damp and heavy sound resounded within the forest.
Haruyuki unsteadily continued walking as he chased after his tail.
After he went around the knot of trees, that scene spread out before his eyes. On the rough and bony surface of a remarkably thick trunk, the black swallowtail butterfly was being kept in place by a thin pin. The wire-like tail that had extended out from Haruyuki’s back had pierce through one of Kuroyukihime’s large wings, and fixed her there like a crucifixion.
Guided by strangely obstructed thoughts, Haruyuki stood in front of the butterfly and looked up. On that beautiful and ephemeral white face, there was nothing like an expression. She simply frowned a little, and motionlessly looked back at Haruyuki.
—Because you have those wings.
From his own mouth, Haruyuki heard a dark and warped voice leak out.
—Because of those wings, you fly as you please.
He involuntarily lifted his right hand. That hand, before he had realized it, was no longer the comical hoof of his pig avatar, but had changed into blackish silver claws. His sinisterly shining and sharp fingertips grasped the edge of one of her powerless and fluttering jet-black wings.
With just a light squeeze, he cut off from the base one the lower-right of the four wings. It at once changed into dry black sand and spilled down from Haruyuki’s hand.
Another wing.
And another wing again.
Unnoticed, Kuroyukihime turned her face down deeply, and hanged her limbs languidly. While extending his hand to the last wing, Haruyuki spoke.
—With this, you can’t go anywhere anymore. You’ll be locked up on this dark ground eternally. Together with me. Just like me.
As soon as he cut off the last remaining wing, Kuroyukihime’s thin body fell into Haruyuki’s arms.
Haruyuki strongly embraced her body with his dark silver claws.
But one second later, even her body within his arms became ink-black particles and dissolved away. It flowed down while making noise, and became a pile of small sand at his feet—……
“……aaAH!”
Haruyuki jumped up in bed along with a blurred voice.
Inside his chest, his heart was ringing like an alarm bell. His whole body was covered in cold sweat, and yet his mouth was parched and dry.
He blinked his blurred eyes many times, and desperately looked at both his hands within the gray light shining through the curtains. Of course, there weren’t any ominous claws there, but just ten swollen fingers. He clenched them tightly, and pushed them against his forehead.
Unlike the night half a year ago where he first received Brain Burst, his memory of this nightmare was vivid right to every nook and cranny. Still frightened from before, Haruyuki slept without wearing his Neuro Linker. In other words, the dream right now wasn’t due to the intervention of the program. It was purely spun from Haruyuki’s memories and feelings.
While slowly shaking his head, Haruyuki muttered in a hoarse voice.
“Senpai…I, don’t want to do such a thing to you…I, I just…”
I just want to be with you forever.
Haruyuki impulsively grabbed his Neuro Linker from the bed’s tabletop, and attached it to his neck. It was 6:15 AM, much earlier than his usual wake-up time, but there was no fragment of sleepiness left in him. Exhausting his whole body, he spoke the Full Dive command.
“Direct Link.”
The view of his dimly-lit room vanished, and darkness spread out from the other side of radial lights. Haruyuki was pulled down by virtual gravity, and soon alighted down on a cold and gray level surface. Many semi-transparent windows with tags like «Participation in public utility rates» and «apartment management association» emerged around him with clear sound effects. This space that was completely devoted to pure function was the main console of the Arita family’s home network.
After looking at the roundish right hand of his pink pig avatar for a while, Haruyuki spoke a voice command with a murmur.
“Command, Dive Call, Number Zero-One.”
Before his eyes, a holo-dialogue appeared that read [Transmitting full-sensory telephone call to registered address 01. Is this okay?]. He shook off a moment of hesitation and pressed the Yes button.
There are several modes of two-way communication using Neuro Linkers.
The mode that is most used is the sound call that communicates using only voice like old cellular phones. The next most popular method is the video call, where you detach the camera part from the tip of the Neuro Linker and talk while projecting your face.
Compared to those methods, the full-sensory call, where the two parties talk using their avatars in a virtual space, isn’t used in as many situations. The reason was, simply, because the person being called may not be able to Full Dive immediately at the place they were at. At the very least, it was required to make an appointment through mail or voice call beforehand, so that ordinary tasks could be satisfied by the time of the conversation.
Therefore, that Haruyuki would be requesting a Dive Call right now to the other person so early in the morning, and moreover without warning, could be said to be a considerably thoughtless act. Even so, Haruyuki wanted to meet with that person right now no matter what. Not just through voice or a 2D video, he wanted to touch her with all five senses. If he didn’t do that, it felt like a part of him would change into something different.
The Ming-cho font[4] of [Currently Sending] blinked eight, nine times, and just before it switched over to voice message, it changed into [Received].
All the surrounding windows vanished with a whoosh. A grain of white light appeared in the cold gray space. It quickly increased in numbers, changed form, and created a single avatar.
The front tips of her high-heel shoes touched the floor with a ka-thunk. After slowly blinking twice, three times, the fairy princess with black swallowtail wings on her back noticed the pig-type avatar standing a little away from her and smiled gently.
“Hey, good morning, Haruyuki-kun.”
Even after having being greeted like that by that smooth silky voice, Haruyuki couldn’t say anything for a while.
He was frightened by the feeling that the slender form in front of him would collapse into sand, and so just stared at her fixedly.
But of course, no matter how many seconds passed, her avatar didn’t disappear. Suddenly coming to his senses, Haruyuki started talking in a rush.
“U-Umm, go…good morning, Kuroyukihime-senpai. Err…s-sorry, for suddenly requesting a Full Dive Call at this hour…”
“No, I had just opened my eyes and I was hesitating whether to fall back asleep.”
Smiling once again, Kuroyukihime then looked around at their surroundings.
“…In any case, this is quite a simple place. Such a light maximum preference of data, well, it is like you…”
“Ah, n-no, that’s not.”
In the initial configuration setup, Dive Calls would summon the person being called to the VR space where the caller was. Because Haruyuki called without moving from the main area of his apartment’s home network, Kuroyukihime had been invited to this world without even a single chair.
“S-Sorry, I’ll change the location immediately!”
He quickly took out the menu window and tried to call out object sets that he had made and stored himself, but all of them were places that had no emotions or feelings, like ruined battlefields or the deck of a battleship.
As Haruyuki continued scrolling through the list while sweating greatly, Kuroyukihime watched him with a wry smile, but eventually clapped her hands and spoke.
“If it’s like that, though it may be a bit slow, may I load my own set? I’d like to try the one I bought yesterday.”
“Ah, yes, please do, please do, please do!”
After Haruyuki nodded as if jumping up and down, Kuroyukihime moved her right hand after smiling once again. She manipulated her menu with high-speed finger movements as if playing a piano.
In front of Haruyuki, a progress bar appeared with a ‘PON’. An object set was being sent over via the Global Net from Kuroyukihime’s Neuro Linker in Okinawa.
Though she said it would be slow, it needed only five seconds to be received, and two seconds to decompress and unfold. At the same time as the bar vanished, intense lighting, no, sunlight poured down from overhead and made the surrounding cold nothingness disappear.
What appeared was a tropical landscape with colors that woke up his eyes. They were at what appeared to be a Shinto shrine, and moss-covered Okinawan lion stone statues were enshrined on both sides of the short path to the shrine. There were surrounded by trees to the left and right, and at the end of the shrine path, down-slope stone steps and in the background the blue sea could be seen.
When he turned around, there was a small shrine painted deep scarlet. Standing next to him, Kuroyukihime opened her parasol with a tapping sound, and held it over both her and Haruyuki’s heads. Then, as if that acted as a switch, countless cricket chirping surged forth from around them, and Haruyuki deeply breathed in the sun-scented air into his chest.
“Let’s sit down over there and talk.”
Kuroyukihime pointed at the small stairs arranged in front of the shrine. After nodding with a “Yes” and moving while stepping on the gravel, Haruyuki lowered his avatar’s waist alongside Kuroyukihime. For a short while, he was satisfied by the exotic though somehow nostalgic scenery spread out right before him.
This was of course a VR space built through digital data, but it wasn’t simply arranged from ready-made polygons. All the objects such as the see-saw images or hemp palm trees were generated based on a real landscape that had been photographed with great time and effort using a personal high-resolution camera. An object set that reproduced a scenic area in such minute detail was currently a standard item for travel souvenirs.
Having foolishly never left Honshu[5] to go to Okinawa, Haruyuki also forgot this was a call on his own, and continued gazing at the scenery as if he had become senile. Kuroyukihime was patiently letting him do that and following his example, but finally she gave a small cough.
“Umm, I have no objection at all to just looking at the scenery with you like this, but…”
Once she said that, Haruyuki, after blankly looking up at the lovely face of the fairy princess next to him, finally remembered that this situation continued from his ridiculous early-morning Dive Call.
“Hauah…s-so, sorry!”
“No, there’s no need to apologize. I just thought that you might have some urgent business with me.”
He stared at the patiently smiling Kuroyukihime, and—
Haruyuki realized another terrible fact. That is, he had no real reason that could be called business.
That’s right, I simply saw a dream right before dawn, a very scary dream…
Suddenly recalling in his hands the feeling tearing off Kuroyukihime’s wings from her back within the dream, Haruyuki’s face became distorted. He tightly clenched his fists, and turned down his gaze.
The words that came out of his mouth next resounded quietly as if the Neuro Linker wasn’t taking it from his brain’s language field, but from the bottom of his deeper soul.
“Umm…umm, I, was lonely.”
While not being clearly conscious of what he was saying, Haruyuki continued letting his facsimile body mutter.
“That I can’t meet with senpai…that you’ve gone somewhere so far away, it’s tough, and so…”
It felt like the virtual forest was silent. Whether the sound effects of the crickets had actually stopped, or his brain was blocking off the environmental sound information, Haruyuki didn’t know.
At the end of the following long silence, a short reply was given with a sigh.
“Me too.”
The shoulders of the pig avatar trembled slightly, and before his cautiously upturned gaze, there was a distorted white face.
“I’m also lonely, Haruyuki-kun.”
Without trying to suppress her tearfully smiling expression, Kuroyukihime lifted her hands and strongly tucked Haruyuki’s cheeks between them.
“It’s the first time that a single week has felt so long to me…Even though I’ve dived continuously in Accel World many times…I want to return to Tokyo quickly and meet you.”
Somehow, just by mentioned that just now, Kuroyukihime bit her lip intensely, and suddenly hugged Haruyuki’s head to her chest within her arms.
Unlike in the Umesato Middle School local network, where the sensation of contact for avatars was impossible because it was diluted to the limit, her clear warmth, softness and fragrance coursed through Haruyuki’s nervous system. Despite it being a situation where he would normally panic and stiffen up, just now only Haruyuki was stirred by an overwhelming longing, and in a daze he reach out his hands and clung to Kuroyukihime’s slender body as well.
—Please come back.
He wanted to say it. To say, ‘Please come back, and save me like you always do.’
At this instant, Haruyuki was clearly aware of just how far he was corned in a deep abyss right now. No matter how much he desperately resisted, the enemy—Dusk Taker, who kept clocking his way as if laughing at his effort, was like a wall of deep black steel. The wish of piercing a hole in that wall with Silver Crow’s slender fist and overcoming it didn’t seem like it would come true.
But, he couldn’t say it.
It wasn’t just for Chiyuri’s sake. For his own sake as well, he had to fight that enemy with his own power till the very end. If he lost to despair here and clung to Kuroyukihime who was in the middle of a school trip, that would be an act essentially no different than what he had done in that dream.
“……We’ll meet again soon, just three more days.”
Haruyuki somehow muttered that with a hoarse voice.
“Yeah…that’s right.”
Kuroyukihime also responded, and after putting all her strength in her arms around him one more time, she released her embrace. With those black pupils that shined as if wet, she looked fixedly at Haruyuki’s eyes from close-range, and—
“Haruyuki-kun…”
As if
sensing something from him, she called his name in an anxious-sounding voice.
Haruyuki mustered all his mental power to force a smile, and spoke before Kuroyukihime could say anything further,
“Umm, please enjoy the remainder of your trip. Sorry for suddenly calling you.”
“No, if you hadn’t called, I would have. I’m happy that we could meet, even if only as avatars. I’ll be buying a gift for you as a souvenir, so please look forward to it.”
Smiling pleasantly, Kuroyukihime stood up and got off onto the gravel. She spun and closed her parasol, and then called out the menu window.
Even when she pressed the disconnect button and her figure vanished into grains of light, Haruyuki kept standing there for a while. The voices of the crickets, which had increased once again, washed away the lingering memory of the nightmare that remained in Haruyuki’s mind.
After Haruyuki finished a breakfast of cereal and milk, said “I’m heading out” to his mother in her bedroom and opened the front door to his home, Haruyuki was greeted by a dull and cloudy lead-colored sky.
He focused his gaze on the icon to the left of his virtual desktop and pressed on the shortcut for the weather forecast. The chance of rain was 70% from 12:40 PM onwards. He went down a step and took out a light grey umbrella from next to the shoebox and then went outside.
This tool known as an umbrella was one of the articles of daily life whose basic structure hadn’t changed for the longest time. It had only changed in that it was now made of the best cloth from undegrading water-repelling material, and its frame was now made of hymonet joule carbon.
While thinking that if it had had an automatic folding gimmick like the parasol used by Kuroyukihime’s avatar a raining day might also be a little fun, Haruyuki walked along the hallway and got onto the elevator.
When the lift, which had begun to descend towards the ground, stopped a little two floors down, Haruyuki held a certain prediction that was close to conviction.
The one who stood on the other side of the door as it slid open was, as he expected, Kurashima Chiyuri.
When their gazes met each other directly, Chiyuri’s big cat-like eyes shook as if hesitating. Though she should have just given her usual “Ossu!” and cheerfully jumped in, her black shoes didn’t move while she collected herself.
Accel World: Flight Towards the Blue Sky Page 4
