Flight Toward a Blue Sky

by Reki Kawahara

  A red letter R blinked next to the time clock displayed in the lower part of his vision, to let him know that he was breaking his personal record. Unaware of even this, however, Haruyuki put everything he had into sprinting the remaining ninety meters. He didn’t actually overtake the students ahead of him in this last spurt, but he was clearly closing the gap, which caused a bit of a commotion among the boys in the class.

  But Haruyuki was indifferent to their chatter, and to his new time flashing before his eyes, the instant he crossed the finish line. Without stopping for even a second, he just kept running in a straight line toward the doors.

  “Heeey! Where’re you going, Aritaaa? Bathroooom?” He heard his gym teacher’s laid-back voice and the laughter of the other students, but he ignored them both.

  He was obviously not headed for the bathroom. He was going to climb up to the third floor of the school and raid Nomi Seiji’s classroom. He was going to pin Nomi’s flesh-and-blood body to the ground, force him to direct, and make him unilaterally and unconditionally surrender, this time for sure. And if he couldn’t do that, he was going to rip Nomi’s Neurolinker off his neck, smash it into tiny pieces, and destroy the core chip.

  This kind of barbarity was absolutely necessary, wasn’t it? After all, this was the boy who had stooped to the most cowardly of blows: threatening Chiyuri to make her do his bidding.

  Each time the intensely violent urge welled up within him, a point in the middle of his back throbbed. Almost like the urge was being created there, over and over again, endlessly.

  “You just wait!” he spat, and pushed off the ground even more violently—until a powerful hand from behind clamped tightly down on his left shoulder.

  “You have to stop, Haru!”

  Haruyuki heard a stifled voice in his ear and reflexively put on the brakes. Unable to stop in anything remotely resembling the cool manner of his duel avatar, he pitched forward and was about to fall when arms grabbed on to him and yanked him back up.

  “Taku, why are you trying to stop me?!” he squeezed out hoarsely, head hanging very low.

  “If you get suspended for fighting now, the only thing that’ll happen is Chi’s life will get a whole lot worse!” Takumu Mayuzumi replied, holding Haruyuki’s left arm with his own muscular right.

  “Her life’s bad enough as it is! Nomi—he threatened Chiyu and forced her to do what he told her! You just gonna let him get away with that?!” Haruyuki whirled around to look at Takumu and saw that the normally clear gaze in his eyes was twisted in agony behind his sport glasses. Haruyuki swallowed his breath.

  Right. It wasn’t like Takumu had no feelings. In his heart, he had to be even more worried about Chiyuri than Haruyuki was, and burning with rage at Nomi’s tricks besides. But at the same time, his old friend was also worried about him—despite the fact that Haruyuki himself had been simply spurred on by anger, without giving the slightest thought to Takumu.

  His back throbbed again, but this was the last time, and the violent impulse receded like a storm. After inhaling deeply and exhaling through his trembling throat, Haruyuki relaxed his shoulders and sighed. “But, I mean, you, you went flying at Nomi before I did.”

  Takumu let out a short, bitter laugh. “Seriously. How many years has it been since I lost it like that…”

  Haruyuki felt the ill will that had hung between them melt away—the one that had been there since they’d argued at his house the day Nomi stole his wings. They stood in the corner of the schoolyard in the silence that followed for a while, but finally, with everyone apparently having finished their runs on the track behind them, the teacher clapped his hands to call the students all together.

  “Shall we go back, Haru?”

  Haruyuki nodded slowly at the words and added in a quiet voice, “You tell Chiyu. Tell her no matter what Nomi said to her, she definitely does not have to obey him.”

  “Yeah, I got it. I’ll— No, we’ll protect Chi.”

  They met each other’s eyes for a moment and then turned on their heels.

  Haruyuki glared up at the third floor of the school one final time and then murmured in the depths of his heart, Nomi, you did something that should never, ever be done. From this moment on, the fight with you is a death match, no time limit. If it kills me, I will destroy whatever you are using to block accelerated duels. I will devote my life to hunting and fighting you until one of us has no more burst points.

  Grinding his teeth, Haruyuki began to walk back to his class alongside Takumu.

  But a mere ten minutes later, everything skidded off the rails in a totally unexpected direction.

  Fifth period was barely over before Haruyuki and Takumu were dashing over to the gym on the other side of the main school building. They spotted Chiyuri just as she was coming out of the hallway between the two buildings and beckoned her urgently from the shadow of a pillar.

  Still in her T-shirt and shorts, she froze when she saw them. Which was only natural. Only a few minutes earlier, she had dived into the field of an actual battle for the first time and been forced to heal their enemy Dusk Taker. As a result, Takumu aka Cyan Pile had lost when his HP gauge hit zero, Haruyuki aka Silver Crow had lost by decision when time ran out, and both of them had had their points taken by Nomi.

  However, they did their best to make their faces say that they didn’t come to yell at her about it. Haruyuki kept moving his arms, while an awkward smile forced its way onto his lips. Chiyuri looked down as if to avoid his eyes, but finally, she said something to her classmates headed for the locker room and broke off from them, approaching Haruyuki and Takumu.

  When he saw Chiyuri’s cheeks pale despite the fact that she had just been doing serious physical activity, his intense rage toward Nomi erupted in his heart again. Takumu, next to him, also clenched his fists tightly before taking a deep breath and opening his mouth.

  “Chi. I think I already understand why you did what you did. Which is why I just came to say: You don’t need to do what he tells you to.”

  “Th-that’s right,” Haruyuki added earnestly. “Right about now, he should be shaking in his boots at the power you have. I mean, with the power to not only recover HP but even destroy weapons, we could put up a real fight against him—no, we could win!”

  Chiyuri furrowed her brow momentarily. It was her habit when she was thinking about something but unsure about that something. A few seconds later, she uttered her first words. “No, that’s not it.”

  “Huh? Th-that’s not it?” Baffled, he simply parroted her words back in question form, and Chiyuri changed suddenly, a fierce light glittering in both eyes.

  “That’s not it,” she repeated, looking at Haruyuki and Takumu in turn. “Nomi’s not forcing me to do anything.”

  “Chi…Th-then what…?” It was Takumu’s turn to be stunned. He blinked rapidly as he took a step toward her.

  Chiyuri pulled back, out of reach. “Nomi asked me,” she replied, quietly but clearly, “to join him. He said I’d be his personal healer and he’d make sure I got a ton of points. And it’s fine, right? Not like I’m in your Legion or anything yet.” She took another step away from her friends, who were rooted to the spot in astonishment, before continuing. “From now on, we probably shouldn’t have any kind of contact with Nega Nebulus. Because we’re all out in the real to one another. Of course, the contract between Haru and Nomi is a completely separate deal.”

  His mind might have gone completely blank and been absolutely unable to grasp what was happening at that moment, but Haruyuki still understood what this “contract” was. It was, in other words, the agreement where Haruyuki paid Nomi ten burst points a week in tribute for two years, so that he could eventually get his flying ability back.

  Chiyuri had no interest in fighting him and Takumu on the battlefield. But she didn’t care about Nomi taking points from Haruyuki. That’s what she was saying.

  It was shocking, but Haruyuki was hit even harder by Chiyuri referring to herself and Nomi as “we.” F
or all the years and years he had known her up to that point, when she said “we,” she always meant Chiyuri, Haruyuki, and Takumu.

  “’Kay, see you,” she said curtly, avoiding their eyes. She turned adroitly aside and ran off toward the locker room.

  All that was left of her presence was the sweet smell of milk, so familiar to him after so long together.

  2

  School had been unpleasant, to say the least, and Haruyuki trudged home, eyes on the ground, completely beaten down.

  This experience was once a totally normal, run-of-the-mill thing for him. When a bunch of kids in his grade bullied him horribly and mercilessly last year, he’d counted the paving tiles of the sidewalk on the trek to his condo pretty much every single day. But having Takumu—the Takumu Mayuzumi—next to him, head hanging and dragging his feet in the exact same way, was a first.

  Takumu had skipped kendo practice on the pretext that he wasn’t feeling well, and they walked silently together on the road from Umesato Junior High to the condo where they both lived.

  “Come over,” Haruyuki said as they slipped through the front gate.

  “…Okay.” Takumu nodded listlessly, and they rode the elevator together to the twenty-third floor.

  Opening the door to his empty apartment and heading into the living room, Haruyuki dropped his bag on the floor and sat at the dining table. Takumu sat down across from him, and for a while, the pair simply sat in silence.

  We sat facing each other like this before, too, Haruyuki thought absently before finally realizing that this “before” had been a mere twenty-four hours earlier—i.e., the incident after school on Monday.

  Haruyuki had fought Seiji Nomi for the first time the previous day, during a free period, and lost the silver wings on his back to Nomi’s special attack.

  Suspecting something was up with Haruyuki and Chiyuri, who had been there for the whole thing, Takumu came over after practice and sat down in that very spot across from him. Haruyuki was in a sadistic, self-torturing kind of mood and said some terrible things to Takumu. For his trouble, he received a solid fist to the face. After that, he jumped on a bus to Shibuya and despairingly threw himself into an accelerated duel. His old enemy, the bike-riding Ash Roller, cursed Haruyuki and his apathetic attitude before dragging him to the old Tokyo Tower in the Unlimited Neutral Field.

  There, he was brought face-to-face with Ash Roller’s guardian and former Nega Nebulus member, Sky Raker. She taught Haruyuki about the Incarnate System, a Burst Linker’s ultimate power, and marched him through an extremely Spartan training regime so he could learn to use it.

  For him to really grasp the first step toward the power of will, it took a full week in the Accelerated World, where his consciousness was accelerated by a factor of a thousand. Which is why, in a certain sense, it was only natural that he felt like the whole thing with Takumu and everything else had happened ages ago.

  Unconsciously, Haruyuki raised his right hand and ran his fingers first over his lower jaw, where Nomi had punched him during the break the day before, and then his right cheek, where Takumu had hit him after school. There was hardly any visible trace of either anymore, but a convulsion of pain shot through him. He could accelerate his mental state and lock himself up in that other world all he wanted, but it wouldn’t heal the wounds to his physical body—his actual pain.

  This gesture as he replayed recent events caught his friend’s eye. “Haru, I told you when I hit you that I didn’t care who Chi was with, so long as she was happy,” Takumu said with a self-deprecating laugh. “But I take it back. There’s pretty much no way I can accept this. I mean, Chi partnering up with that Seiji Nomi kid.”

  “Forget accepting it,” Haruyuki responded hollowly, dropping his hand to the table. “I can’t even believe it. I mean, it’s true there’s no rule in Brain Burst saying you have to be on the same team as your friends in the real or anything, but…I just can’t believe Chiyu’s so focused on points, she’d betray us to join Nomi…”

  “Well, from a points perspective, hooking up with Nomi’s definitely going to be more effective than joining us. Now that he’s got your wings, Haru, Dusk Taker’s battle power’s way over the top. And if he makes his duel debut with the healer Lime Bell on his team, there’s not a midrange Burst Linker who could seriously take them on.”

  “Considering how depressed you are about it, that’s a pretty levelheaded judgment, Professor.” Now it was Haru with the wry smile playing on his lips, but a sigh soon pushed that aside. “But still, Taku…This is Chiyu we’re talking about here. Chiyu, the girl who completely does not get games at all. I swear, she could even get her entire party wiped out in a story-mode battle in an RPG. You think she actually has any idea about the most effective way to get points?”

  “I—I don’t, not really. Dammit…”

  As Haruyuki talked with his best friend, the shock of Chiyuri’s declaration of farewell eased, if only slightly, and in a very muted way; slowly, he pulled himself to his feet and headed for the kitchen.

  He took a frozen pizza box out of the large freezer and tossed it in the microwave before taking out a bottle of oolong tea and grabbing two glasses to go with it. He carried these out to the table, along with the pizza—which had finished defrosting and cooking in mere minutes—and set everything down.

  “Thanks,” Takumu murmured as he poured oolong tea in his glass.

  Opening the box, Haruyuki grabbed a slice of the seafood pizza, and just as he was about to shove the tip, with its thin, dangling strings of cheese, into his mouth, he suddenly heard a voice.

  Aah! You’re eating this stuff again! Well, I guess I’ll just have to get Mom to make you something.

  But of course, it was not a real voice or even a PCM file played back by his Neurolinker. The flavor of the lasagna Chiyuri had brought over only a few days earlier came back to life on his tongue, and he took a huge bite of the mass-produced pizza to try and kill it.

  As he chewed on the strangely salty pizza, head in his hand, he heard the sniffling back of snot. He raised his eyes slowly to witness Takumu, head also hanging, mouth also masticating pizza, rub his eyes intently beneath his glasses.

  Abruptly, a completely different pain pierced his heart.

  Taku’s always so calm and collected, and so clever he runs circles around me. But he definitely can’t take a real hit.

  He tried to do everything he could to help me after my wings got stolen and I got reckless. So now it’s my turn. It’s my turn to cheer him up and have his back, Haruyuki murmured to himself. He closed his eyes, scarfed down the rest of his pizza, drained his glass of oolong tea, and slammed it back down on the table.

  “Taku!” he shouted. Takumu’s shoulders shot up and he turned red eyes on Haruyuki. Meeting those eyes squarely, he continued, “Taku, I believe in Chiyu! Which is why I don’t believe what she said!”

  “Huh?”

  “I said it before, didn’t I? Joining up with Nomi because she wants points? That’s not like Chiyu at all. So we just scrap that possibility completely. Probably—no, I’m like ninety percent sure that our first guess was the truth. Nomi’s threatening Chiyu to make her his partner, and he forced her to tell us that. That just makes so much more sense. Doesn’t it?” Still holding his glass, Haruyuki laid out his thinking confidently.

  Takumu considered this carefully. “Mm-hmm,” he responded eventually, in a tone that was more or less back to his usual calm voice. “That does sound plausible. But, Haru, there’s a bit of a contradiction there. ‘Scrap completely’ but ‘ninety percent sure’? So then the remaining ten percent uncertainty is the possibility that Chi voluntarily went over to Nomi, right?”

  “Yeah. But for a different reason.”

  “Reason? Are you saying there’s something other than points that would make Chi turn against us?”

  Looking up at Takumu as he cocked his head, Haruyuki instinctively shrank back. “That would be…,” he whispered, “the leader of our Legion Nega Nebulus�
��Her…”

  Takumu’s eyelids fluttered rapidly, as if he had been caught off guard. But soon enough, the same uneasiness that was on Haruyuki’s face descended upon his. “I—I see. If Chi thinks there’s no way she’s going to be subordinate to Master—Kuroyukihime…”

  “Can you definitively say she wouldn’t?”

  At Haruyuki’s question, Takumu shook his head from side to side, a fairly complicated expression on his face, and expelled a lengthy sigh. “But if that’s the case,” he added, almost groaning, “then we really do have to finally tell Master about everything and get her to help us fight. If she finds out that Chi betrayed us and healed Nomi all because of her…”

  “She might totally destroy Lime Bell, along with Dusk Taker.”

  He knew only too well how severe she could be, Kuroyukihime, the person behind Black Lotus, the level-nine duel avatar who was the Black King and the leader of the Legion Nega Nebulus. Anyone she decided was the enemy was mercilessly cut down with the swords of her hands. It was pretty hard—no, impossible—to believe that she would not apply this same general principle to Chiyuri.

  Haruyuki dropped his gaze to the surface of the table and then yanked it right back up to Takumu. “She’s coming back from the school trip Saturday night, so we have four days,” he said, like he was trying to convince himself. “We just have to sort this out before then.”

  “Sort it out? How?”

  “Either Chiyu’s being coerced or she’s actually doing all this of her own free will. But if we take Nomi down, if we push him to the edge and he loses Brain Burst, then everything ends. Right?”

  Takumu took a deep breath at Haruyuki’s words before a slightly bitter smile crossed his lips. “Easier said than done, Haru. Even if we somehow did manage to figure out what keeps him from showing up on the matching list, who knows how many times we’d have to win to get Dusk Taker down to zero points.”

  “Dunno,” Haruyuki said shortly and began thinking out loud. “Nomi just started at Umesato, and he’s been burning through points to build himself up, what with the test and the kendo matches. Especially in kendo with the ‘physical acceleration’ command. That costs five points. I mean, he’s still at level five. Do you think he really has that many points to spare?”