Asuna must have felt the same. She hugged me close, watching Aincrad fall to pieces, her lids half lowered. I slowly stroked her hair.
“That’s a fine sight.”
The voice from my right took me by surprise. Asuna and I looked over to see that a man was now standing at the edge with us.
Akihiko Kayaba.
The developer of Sword Art Online, not the paladin Heathcliff. He wore a white shirt and tie underneath a long white lab coat. The contours of his face were fine and sharp, but the metallic eyes and the way he placidly observed the disappearing castle were the same as his prior incarnation. Like us, he was partially transparent.
Less than an hour ago, I had been locked in a battle to the death with this man, but I felt at peace now. It was as if I had to leave all my rage and hatred behind to reach this world of endless sunset. I pulled my eyes away from Kayaba and back to the castle, then spoke.
“What’s happening to Aincrad?”
“You might call it a visual metaphor.” His voice was quiet. “At this moment, the SAO mainframe, stored five levels underground at the Argus building, is deleting all data saved on its server. In another ten minutes, nothing will remain of this world.”
“What happened to all the people who were there?” Asuna murmured.
“Don’t worry about them. Just moments ago…”
He waved a hand, then glanced at the window that popped up.
“…all 6,174 surviving players were logged out and regained consciousness.”
So Klein, Agil, and all the other people we’d met there, the ones who had lived through those two years with us, were all back in the real world, safe and sound.
I shut my eyes tightly, warding off the emotion that threatened to seep out.
“…And those who died? We both ‘died,’ and we’re here right now, so isn’t it possible that you could bring the other four thousand back to consciousness?”
He closed the window, his face unchanging, then placed his hands in the pockets of his coat.
“Life is not meant to be treated so lightly. They will not come back. In every world, the dead must disappear. You two are a special exception. I wanted a bit more time to speak with you.”
That is what a man who killed four thousand people has to say for himself? But for some reason, the anger did not come. Instead, I had another question. A very simple question that every player in the game—every person who was aware of what happened here—wanted to know.
“So why…did you do this?”
I thought I detected a pained smile cross his face. He was silent for a while.
“Why, you ask? For a long time, even I had forgotten. Why did I do this? When I learned about the development of the full-dive system—in fact, long before that moment—I dreamed of creating that castle. Creating a world that surpassed all the rules and laws of reality. And finally…I even saw the laws of my own world eclipsed.”
He turned the serene light of his eyes upon me, then back again.
A slight gust picked up, rustling Kayaba’s lab coat and Asuna’s hair. The castle was more than half gone by now. Even memorable Algade had crumbled into nothingness, swallowed by the clouds. Kayaba continued.
“Children experience a great variety of dreams and fantasies. At a young age, I was gripped with a vision of a castle of iron floating in the sky…Even after I grew older, that vision never left my mind. In fact, with every year the picture grew larger and more real. For years, my one and only desire was to leave the surface and travel to that castle. You see, Kirito, a part of me still believes that castle really exists…in some world, somewhere…”
Suddenly, I felt the illusion that I had been born there, too, a boy who dreamed of being a swordsman someday. One day, that boy would meet a girl with hazel eyes. They would fall in love, be bound as one, and live out their days in a little cottage in the woods…
“Yeah…I hope it does,” I murmured. Asuna nodded softly in my arms.
The silence returned. As I gazed far away, I noticed that the process of entropy was now affecting more than just the castle. In the far distance, the supposedly infinite sea of clouds and red sky were being visibly swallowed by white light. The light was bleeding through here and there, slowly approaching.
“One last thing. Congratulations on beating the game, Kirito and Asuna.”
We both turned to look up at him. He was gazing down at us, a beatific smile on his face.
“And now, I should be going.”
The wind blew, and suddenly he was gone, as if erased from existence. The crimson sunset was sparkling subtly through the crystal platform. We were alone again.
Where had he gone? Back to the real world?
No—that was unlikely. He must have deleted his own mind and traveled off in search of the real Aincrad.
Only the tip of the virtual fortress was left now. We were seeing the seventy-sixth floor and above for the very first time, but only in a state of rapid self-destruction. The curtain of light that swallowed the world was growing close. As the rippling aurora touched everything in its path, even the clouds and sky itself shattered into those familiar, fragile shards.
An enormous red palace with a fragile spire sat atop the very tip of Aincrad. If the game had proceeded according to plan, we would likely have crossed swords with the wicked overlord Heathcliff there.
Even as the top floor fell, the master-less castle continued to float, as if defying its fate. The deep red gleam of the structure stood out against the red backdrop, like the heart of the castle, left behind after all its flesh had fallen away.
Eventually, the wave of destruction swallowed it as well. It disintegrated into countless rubies from the bottom up, spilling down into the clouds. The tallest tip of the castle burst into pieces just as the curtain of light swallowed all of it. Aincrad ceased to exist, and the only things left in the world were clouds, the little floating platform, and Asuna and me.
There wasn’t much time left. We were in the midst of a brief stay of execution, courtesy of Kayaba. When the world was completely gone, the NerveGear would execute its final procedure, and then it would truly be over.
I cupped her cheek with my hand and slowly met her lips. It was our final kiss. I took my time, trying to etch her entire existence into my soul.
“Well, this is good-bye.”
She shook her head.
“No. It’s not good-bye. We’ll disappear as one. So we’ll always be together.”
It was almost a whisper, but firm. She turned in my arms to face me head-on, tilted her head slightly, and gave me a gentle smile.
“Hey, tell me your name. Your real name.”
I was momentarily stunned. Then I realized that she was talking about my name in the life I’d left behind two years ago. The fact that I’d led a different life under a different name seemed like a story from the distant past, a world long lost. I spoke the name that floated up from the depths of my memory, grappling with the strange sensation.
“Kirigaya…Kazuto Kirigaya. I lost count, but I probably turned sixteen last month.”
In that instant, I felt like the life that had paused so long ago started ticking once again. Kazuto slowly began to surface from deep within Kirito the swordsman. The heavy armor I’d gained in this world began to fall off, piece by piece.
“Kazuto…Kirigaya…”
She sounded out each syllable, then gave me a conflicted laugh.
“So you’re younger than me…As for me, I’m Asuna Yuuki. Age seventeen.”
Asuna…Yuuki. Asuna Yuuki. I repeated the most beautiful sounds I’d ever heard, committing them to my heart.
Suddenly, I felt something hot spilling out of my eyes.
The emotions that had been frozen in the endless twilight churned into motion. Incredible pain that ripped my heart in pieces. The first tears I’d shed since being taken prisoner in this world came flooding out of me. Sobs caught in my throat like a little child, my hands balled into fists.
�
�I’m sorry…I’m sorry I said…I would bring you back…I promised to do it…but…”
I couldn’t finish the rest. In the end, I couldn’t save the most important person in the world to me. The regret that I had let her shining future come to a premature end turned to tears that flowed out of me without cease.
“No…it’s okay…”
Asuna was crying, too. Her tears were like glistening jewels in all the colors of the rainbow, particles of light that dripped and evaporated.
“I was so happy to have met you and lived with you, Kazuto. It was the happiest time of my life. Thank you…I love you…”
The end of the world was at hand. The giant fortress of metal and the endless expanse of sky had vanished into the light, and only the two of us remained. The air around us was sucked into the vacuum, fragmenting into dots of light.
Asuna and I embraced, waiting for the end.
In the midst of the incandescent light, it felt like even our emotions were being burned away. Only my yearning for Asuna was left. Everything disintegrated and evaporated, but I kept calling Asuna’s name.
My vision was filled with light. Everything was covered in a veil of white, dancing into microscopic motes. Asuna’s smile dissolved into the light that filled the world.
I love you…I love you so much…
A voice like a ringing bell sounded in the last bit of my consciousness.
The boundary that made Asuna and me separate beings vanished, and we crossed into each other.
Our souls mingled, became one, scattered.
Disappeared.
25
The air had a smell.
That, more than my continued consciousness, was the first surprise.
There was an enormous amount of information flowing into my olfactory glands. The piercing odor of disinfectant. The sunny scent of dry cotton. Sweet fruit. And my own body.
I slowly opened my eyes. The powerful beam of light seemed to pierce the back of my brain, and I quickly squeezed my eyelids shut.
After a while, I slowly opened them again. There was an interplay of various colors. Belatedly, I realized that it was fluid blocking my sight. I blinked, trying to clear it away, but the fluid kept coming. Tears.
I was crying. Why? There was a sharp pain in my chest that told of deep, agonizing loss. I felt as though I could hear someone calling out from a distance. I squinted against the light and tried to brush away the tears.
It seemed that I was lying on top of something soft. I could see what looked like a ceiling. There was a grid of off-white panels, and some of them were glowing, lit by something behind them. There was a metallic slit in the side of my vision. Probably a respirator. It was emitting air with a low groaning sound.
…A respirator. A machine. That shouldn’t be here. Even the most proficient blacksmith couldn’t fashion a machine. And even if it really was what it appeared to be, in Aincrad there was no electricity to—
This wasn’t Aincrad.
I opened my eyes. That train of thought had finally woken me up. I tried to bolt upward—
But my body wouldn’t listen. I had no strength. I raised my shoulder a few inches but immediately sank back down, pathetically weak.
I could move my right hand, though. I drew it out of the light blanket that had been placed over my body, raising it in front of my face.
For a moment, I couldn’t believe that the startlingly thin limb in front of me was actually my own. This bony thing could never swing a sword. When I looked closely at the sickly pale skin, I saw countless soft, downy hairs. Purplish veins were visible beneath the surface, and fine wrinkles bunched around the joints. It was so incredibly realistic. In fact, it was so…biological…that it didn’t feel right.
Some kind of injection catheter was fixed into the inner joint of my elbow. A thin cord ran out and up into a clear packet on the left, hung on a silver mounting rack. The packet was about 70 percent full of an orange liquid, dripping with a steady rhythm through a nozzle into the tube.
I moved my left hand, which was splayed next to my body, trying to find some sensation in it. I seemed to be lying on a bed made of some kind of high-density gel material. It felt slightly cooler than my body temperature, chilly and wet to the touch. I was naked, directly on top of it. A long-lost memory came back to me: a news segment from years ago, describing a product just like this one, a new development for patients who were bedridden for long periods of time. It protected against skin inflammation and broke down bodily waste.
I tried looking around now. The room was small, the walls the same off-white as the ceiling. There was a large window on the right with white curtains. I couldn’t see beyond them, but the yellow-tinged light passing through the material seemed to be sunlight. At the left foot of the gel bed was a metal tray cart, on top of which lay a rattan cage. A large bouquet of flowers in subdued colors was placed inside the cage—this must be the source of the sweet scent. Behind the cart was a square door. It was shut.
Based on the information I’d just gleaned, this must be a hospital room. I was lying in it, all alone.
I focused again on my right hand, still in the air. On a whim, I held my index and middle fingers together and swiped downward.
Nothing happened. No sound effects, no menu window. I tried it again, harder this time. And again. Nothing happened.
Which meant this wasn’t SAO. Another virtual world perhaps?
But the overwhelming amount of sensory information I was picking up spoke urgently of another possibility: the real world. The one I’d left two years ago, the one I thought I’d never see again.
The real world…It took me quite some time to fathom what that truly meant. For years, the world of swords and battle was my reality. It was hard to believe that world was gone, that I was no longer there.
I was back.
But there was no rush of emotion or joy with that realization. Only confusion and a faint sense of loss.
This was my reward for beating Kayaba’s game. Even though I’d died, turned to nothingness, accepted my fate, and even felt satisfied with it.
That’s right—I was fine with it all ending there. In the midst of that fierce light, I’d disintegrated, evaporated, become one with the world, with her…
“Ah…”
The sound tumbled out. There was a sharp pain in my throat; I hadn’t used it in two years. But I wasn’t even aware of that. I opened my eyes wide, trying to mouth the word, the name that came to me.
“A…su…na…”
Asuna. The pain that burned deep in my chest came back. Asuna, my beloved, my wife, the woman who had stood at the end of the world with me…
Was it a dream? A beautiful illusion I’d witnessed in an artificial world? For a moment, I wasn’t sure.
No, she was real. We’d laughed together, cried together, fallen asleep together—those things weren’t a dream. Kayaba had said, “Congratulations on beating the game, Kirito and Asuna.” I heard him say her name. If I was included among the players who survived, Asuna must be as well.
The moment I realized this, my love and overwhelming longing for her exploded within me. I want to see her. I want to touch her hair. I want to kiss her. I want to hear her voice.
I summoned all the strength I could and tried to sit up. For the first time, I realized that my head was being held in place. I felt under my chin and unlocked a tough harness I found there. There was something heavy on my head. Using both hands, I was able to pull it off.
Once in a full sitting position, I looked at the object in my hands. It was a streamlined helmet in navy blue. Cables the same shade of blue extended from the long pad on the back of the helmet and down to the floor.
It was a NerveGear. This is what kept me connected to that world for two years. The unit was powered off. If memory served, there were gleaming lights that lined the outside when it was running, but now it was dark, the edges of the helmet flaking off and the alloy base exposed.
Inside it was all the m
emory of that world. I stroked the front of the gear, lost in thought.
I’ll probably never wear you again. But you were good to me…
I laid the headgear down on the bed. At this point, my struggles with it were just a memory of the distant past. There were things for me to do here now.
It seemed like there was a commotion in the distance. I focused my ears, and as though my hearing was finally coming back to normal, various sounds jumped out at me.
I could hear a great number of people talking and yelling. Footsteps thumped hastily outside the door, and gurney wheels clattered by.
I didn’t know if Asuna was in this hospital. The people playing SAO were from all over Japan, so the probability that she would just so happen to be in this building was slim at best. But this is where I’d start. No matter how long it took, I would find her.
I ripped off the thin blanket. There were countless cords attached all over my gaunt body. The electrodes on my limbs were probably meant to stimulate the muscles to prevent atrophy. I painstakingly removed each one. Orange lights on a bedside panel flashed on, and a high-pitched alarm sounded, but I ignored it.
I pulled out the IV, then swung my legs to the floor, finally free. Slowly and gently, I tried to stand. Quavering, I managed to support my weight at first, but my knees soon gave way. I had to laugh. I could really use that strength stat again.
On my second attempt, I was able to stay on my feet by leaning on the IV stand for support. I looked around the room, then spotted a patient’s gown on the lower shelf of the cabinet that held the flowers.
Just the act of putting it on left me breathless. My limbs, which had been still for two entire years, were all screaming in protest. But I couldn’t give up now.
Faster, faster, I told myself. My entire body needed her. My fight would not end until the moment I could hold Asuna in my arms again.
I gripped the metal stand like my trusty sword, giving it my weight, taking the first step to the door.
(The End—Sword Art Online, Volume 1)
AFTERWORD
The volume of Sword Art Online you hold in your hands now was my first novel, written for the Dengeki Game Novel Prize in 2002.
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