Early and Late

by Reki Kawahara

  It was my turn to frown. With the atmosphere a bit looser now, Schmitt sat up, his armor clanking loudly. He turned on me, his voice still tense.

  “Kirito…I must thank you for saving me…but how did you know that those men would attack us here?”

  I looked back into his desperate, searching eyes and chose my words carefully.

  “It wasn’t that I knew. I just thought it might be possible. If I’d known it was PoH from the start, I might have freaked out and run for safety.”

  There was a reason I was playing this a bit aloof. What I was about to say was bound to deliver a huge shock to these three—particularly Yolko and Caynz. They had written their own scenario, engineered and starred in it to seeming perfection—but they didn’t realize that there was a hidden producer lurking in the shadows of the entire incident. I took a deep breath and tried to speak as quietly and calmly as I could.

  “…I only noticed that something was wrong about thirty minutes ago…”

  The incident was over. The rest was up to Yolko, Caynz, and Schmitt now—or so I told Asuna, leaning back in my chair on the second floor of the inn overlooking the little pub on the twentieth floor.

  They wouldn’t kill one another. Let the players of the ring incident that had started this all take care of the business themselves, I said. Asuna nodded and agreed.

  But in the silence that followed, I couldn’t help but feel a tiny little thorn in my chest that would not come out cleanly.

  There was something I needed to consider. I knew it was there, but I didn’t know what it was or how to remember it.

  The root of this sensation lay in something that Asuna said while we were in this room, staking out the pub. Before I realized it, I was calling out to her.

  “…What is it?” the vice commander of the KoB said, looking at me. About 80 percent of my mind was fixated on the sensation of wrongness, so the thoughtlessness of the question that followed could be blamed on that.

  “Asuna, have you ever been married?”

  Her answer was an icy, murderous glare, a clenched fist, and a preparatory attack stance.

  “No, I mean, not that, forget it!!” I cried before she could slug me. I shook my hands and head in defensive panic, quickly adding, “No, what I mean is…you were saying something about marriage before, right?”

  “I did. What about it?” she asked, fixing me with a steely gaze.

  I trembled even harder, desperately running my mouth. “Um, w-well…gosh, what was it—something about how it was romantic, or plastic, or something-tic…”

  “Nobody said anything remotely resembling that!”

  She kicked me in the shin just soft enough not to set off the Code, then filled in the blanks for me. “I said it was romantic and pragmatic! And in case you’ve never opened a dictionary, pragmatic means practical and sensible!”

  “Practical…? Marriage in SAO?”

  “Yes. I mean, it doesn’t get much more brutally faithful than shared inventory, right?”

  “Shared…inventory…”

  That was it.

  That was the source of the thorn that was still stuck in my chest.

  Married players completely shared all of their items. The carrying limit expanded to the total of both players’ strength combined, so while it was extremely convenient, it also came with the danger of marriage fraud, where a spouse stole all the best items and disappeared.

  What was it about this system that stuck out to me?

  Unable to reach the root of this overwhelming frustration, I asked, “Th-then…what happens to the items when you get divorced?”

  “Huh…?”

  Asuna looked at me in surprise, her eyes round. She inclined her head in wonderment, bringing her punching fist up to stroke her slender chin.

  “Let’s see…I believe there are a few options. There’s automatic distribution, taking turns choosing an item at a time, and a few other methods that I don’t remember…”

  “I want to know more. How do we find out? Oh hey, what if we—”

  That I didn’t finish that question was either a brilliant decision or a stroke of good luck.

  The Flash grinned at me, her left hand on the scabbard of her Lambent Light, several times the previous hint of murder in the air.

  “What if we what?”

  “…Wh-what if…weeee…write a question to Heathcliff right now?”

  A minute later, he wrote back with a concise and accurate description of what happens to inventory space upon a divorce. The man was a walking game manual.

  Asuna had already mentioned the automatic and by-turn methods of dividing items. It was also possible to set up an automated system that worked on designated percentages, rather than down the middle. That meant that alimony payments were essentially possible as well. Yes, very pragmatic.

  As Asuna read off the message, my mind worked rapidly. These options had to be decided upon by both parties at the moment of divorce, of course. In other words, you could not legally divorce unless you both agreed to an asset-splitting scheme. But in reality, an amicable agreement couldn’t be reached in every case. So what would happen if you wanted to get divorced but couldn’t see eye to eye with your partner? There was no domestic affairs court in Aincrad.

  The answer to that question was in the very last sentence of Heathcliff’s reply to Asuna.

  “‘…Incidentally, an unconditional divorce is only possible if one sets their own item allotment to zero percent, with the partner receiving one hundred percent of the shared inventory. In that case, any items the partner cannot carry at the point of redistribution will be dropped at his or her feet. If Kirito is afraid of the imminent possibility of divorce, I would recommend staying in a private room at an inn’…he says.” Asuna finished reading, closing the window with an unpleasant expression.

  As I idly gazed at her face, I repeated one phrase from the message over and over.

  Zero for you, hundred for partner. Zero for you…hundred for partner…

  “Ah…”

  The thorn of suspicion that remained firmly jammed into my chest suddenly twinged sharply. It was a small thing, but it started to grow and grow, from hesitation to doubt, to conviction and then shock, then all the way to fear.

  “Ah…aaaah!!”

  I stood up with a bolt, my chair rattling, and grabbed Asuna’s shoulders. The Flash pulled away in startled disbelief and gaped, “Wha…what are you…You’re not really expecting to…”

  But I wasn’t taking in any information. I husked, “Hundred for you, zero for your partner. There’s only one way to ensure that happens.”

  “…Huh…? What are you talking about…?”

  I kept a firm grip on her shoulders, drawing her petite face closer to mine, and whispered, “Death. The moment your spouse dies, your inventory returns to its original size, and the items you can’t hold drop at your feet. Meaning…meaning…”

  My throat convulsed and swallowed.

  “Meaning…that in the instant of the murder of Griselda, leader of Golden Apple, that ultra-rare and powerful ring, which was kept in her item storage, went not to the killer…but into the inventory of her husband, Grimlock, or materialized and dropped at his feet.”

  The hazel-brown eyes, just inches away, blinked once, then twice. The disbelief in her eyes suddenly turned into stark horror.

  So the ring…wasn’t stolen…? she mouthed silently. But I couldn’t answer right away. I let go of her shoulders, straightened up, and leaned back heavily against the window frame.

  “No…that’s not true. It was stolen. Grimlock stole a ring that was already in his inventory. He’s not the one responsible for this fake safe-haven murder case. He’s the mastermind of the ring incident from half a year ago.”

  The rapier sheath fell out of Asuna’s hand and thudded heavily on the floor.

  “…I only noticed that something was wrong about thirty minutes ago…Caynz, Yolko, how did you get these two weapons? The barbed short spear and dagger
,” I asked.

  Yolko and her partner shared a glance, then she said, “In order to pull off a fake safe-haven PK, we needed a piercing weapon that would cause damage over time. We looked through all the weapon shops we could find, but there were no specially designed weapons with that feature…And if we had a blacksmith make one for us, his name would stay on the weapon. Then anyone could ask him and he’d reveal that it was paid for by the victims of the case, and the mystery would be over.”

  “So without a better option, we reached out to contact the leader’s husband, Grimlock, for the first time since the guild disbanded. We explained our plan so that he would make us the piercing weapons we needed. We didn’t know where to find him, but we were still registered as friends,” Caynz continued for Yolko. At the mention of that name, all of my nerves honed in on my ears to listen.

  “At first, Grimlock didn’t seem very enthusiastic about it. His first response said to just let her memory sleep in peace. But we kept pleading with him, and he finally relented and made us two—no, three weapons. And we got them just three days before the moment of Kains’s ‘death.’”

  This, at least, made it clear that Yolko and Caynz believed that Grimlock was the first and foremost victim in the murder of his wife. I took a deep breath, steeling myself to utter the words that I was certain would bring them much shock and pain.

  “…I’m sorry to say that Grimlock wasn’t against your plan for Griselda’s sake. He was afraid that if you went to the trouble of an eye-catching PK inside the safe haven, someone was going to notice. Notice what happens to the items in a shared inventory when a marriage is dissolved because of death, rather than divorce.”

  “Huh…?”

  Yolko stared at me, totally baffled.

  I couldn’t blame her. Even very close couples in Aincrad seldom made it to the stage of marriage, but divorces were even more rare, and couples split apart by death even more so. Both Asuna and I had totally believed that when Griselda died, the ring had dropped as loot for the one who killed her.

  “Listen…everything in Griselda’s possession simultaneously belonged to Grimlock. You couldn’t steal that ring even by killing her. It would automatically teleport to Grimlock the instant she died. You got a reward of money for taking part in the scheme, right, Schmitt?” I asked. The big man sitting cross-legged on the ground shook his head in disbelief.

  I continued. “It would have taken the sale of the ring to put together a fortune of that size in the first place. Only Grimlock could have done that once he got the ring, and he knew that Schmitt was an accomplice in the plan. Meaning…”

  “Grimlock did this…? You’re saying he was the one who sent the note…and actually took Griselda out of the town to kill her?” Schmitt mumbled, his voice cracking. I considered this possibility.

  “No, he wouldn’t have dirtied his hands directly. She might wake from her sleep while being portal-ed out of her bedchamber. If she saw his face, he’d never be able to cover it up. He probably paid some red players to do the dirty work of the killing. That doesn’t decrease his crime in the slightest, of course…”

  “…”

  Schmitt simply gazed into empty space and said no more. Yolko and Caynz also looked as though their souls had temporarily left their bodies. A few seconds later, she shook her head, dark blue hair swaying, the motion growing fiercer over time.

  “No…it’s not true. It can’t be! They were always together…Grimlock was always smiling happily at her side and…Besides! R-right?—If he was the true culprit, then why did he help us in our plan?! We couldn’t have done a thing if he hadn’t crafted those weapons for us, and the ring incident would never have been dug up again. Isn’t that right?”

  “You explained the entirety of your idea to him, didn’t you?” I asked abruptly. She shut her mouth for a moment, then nodded. “Meaning that he knew what would happen in the end if your plan was successful. Wracked by guilt, Schmitt would visit Griselda’s grave, to be accosted by you and Caynz, dressed as the dead. That would make it possible to permanently bury the ring incident forever. He could eliminate his accomplice, Schmitt, and you two searching for resolution, all at once.”

  “…I see. So…that’s why they were here…” Schmitt mumbled. I looked in his direction and nodded, feeling gloomy.

  “That’s right. The top three members of Laughing Coffin showed up here because Grimlock fed them information. That a major officer of the DDA would be here without a security detail…He probably had connections to them ever since he paid them to kill off Griselda…”

  “…I can’t believe it…”

  Caynz had to hold out his hand to keep Yolko from falling straight to the ground. But his face, too, was obviously pale, even in the dim light of the moon.

  As she clung to Caynz’s shoulder for support, Yolko whispered dully, “Grimlock was…trying to kill us? But…why…? And…why would he kill his own wife just to steal a ring…?”

  “I can’t possibly conjecture about a motive. But I’m guessing that while he stayed in the guild base the night of the murder for the sake of an alibi, he couldn’t have helped coming to keep tabs on this one. Especially knowing that getting rid of you three would make the end of two criminal incidents. So…let’s ask him for the real scoop.”

  At the end of my sentence, two sets of footsteps could be heard climbing the west face of the hill.

  The first thing to come into sight was a knight’s uniform of brilliant white and red, clearly visible through the night. This was, obviously, Asuna the Flash. In her right hand hung a rapier with a crystal-pure platinum blade. It was the most graceful and beautiful sword that I knew in Aincrad and also one of the fiercest and most efficient at breaking through defenses.

  Its fierce point and owner’s sharp gaze were keeping a man walking ahead of her. He was very tall, with a long-sleeve and loose-fitting leather jacket and a wide-brim hat. In the shadow beneath it, something occasionally reflected the moonlight—glasses, probably. He looked less like a blacksmith than a hit man from some Hong Kong movie. It was hard for me to avoid that preconception, for understandable reasons.

  Both of their cursors were green. Realizing that if he tried to escape, Asuna might temporarily become an orange player in halting him, her green status was a relief to me—though I was prepared to undergo the annoying quests needed to restore one’s good alignment alongside her, if necessary. As the man approached, however, I steeled myself properly to face him.

  Behind his round, silver-framed glasses was a face that looked gentle and soft, if anything. His face was thin, and his slightly drooping eyes were kindly. But there was something in his small black pupils behind the lenses that set off my sense of caution.

  The man stopped about ten feet away and looked first at Schmitt, then Yolko and Caynz, and lastly, at the mossy grave marker.

  “Well…hello again, everyone,” he said, cool and calm.

  Several seconds later, Yolko responded, “Grimlock…Did…did you really…”

  Kill Griselda and steal the ring? And try to erase three people here to ensure that the entire matter was covered up permanently?

  The words were never spoken aloud, but everyone heard them. Grimlock the blacksmith, former sub-leader of Golden Apple, did not answer at once. When Asuna had returned her rapier to its sheath and moved to stand at my side, he smiled slightly.

  “…You have the wrong idea. I was only on the way here under the belief that I had a responsibility to see this series of events to its conclusion. The reason I obeyed that scary woman’s commands was because I wanted to clear up the misunderstanding.”

  He’s going to deny it? I thought, closing my eyes. Sure, we had no proof that he’d passed the information to PoH, but when it came to the ring incident, there was no way for him to weasel out of the systematic evidence.

  “Liar!” snapped Asuna. “You were hiding in the bushes. If I hadn’t been able to reveal you with my Search skill, you’d have stayed put the whole time!”


  “That’s not my fault. I’m just a blacksmith. As you can see, I am unarmed. Can you blame me for not jumping out into the open with those terrifying orange players out and about?” he replied pleasantly, spreading his gloved hands.

  Schmitt, Caynz, and Yolko listened to Grimlock’s words in silence. They were still having trouble believing it. Accepting that your former sub-leader had paid bloodthirsty killers to knock you off was a huge leap, and one they didn’t consciously want to make.

  Asuna started to retort again, but I stilled her with a hand and spoke at last.

  “Hello there, Grimlock. My name is Kirito and…well, I’m an outsider in this matter. I’ll be honest: I don’t have evidence linking your presence here to the attack by Laughing Coffin. They certainly won’t be offering testimony to us.”

  Of course, if we had Grimlock make his menu window visible so we could check his friend list or sent messages, we would certainly find the name of whatever player handled the assassination business for Laughing Coffin. I just didn’t know what that name was.

  But while the matter of the attempted murders here might not be solvable, I knew that the other matter was undeniable.

  “But the ring incident last fall that caused the breakup of Golden Apple…You are absolutely involved with that—you orchestrated it, in fact. Because whoever actually killed Griselda, the ring would have stayed in your possession, thanks to your shared inventory. You hid that fact, secretly liquidated the ring, then gave half of the amount to Schmitt. Only the culprit could have done this. So your only motive for getting involved in this safe-haven incident was to silence the people involved with the past and cover it up. Am I wrong?”

  A heavy silence filled the open air on the hill. The pale moonlight falling upon the scene cast Grimlock’s face into shadowy contrast. Eventually his mouth twisted in an odd way and he spoke again, slightly cooler this time.

  “This is a very fascinating line of logic, Detective…But sadly, you have missed one thing.”

  “What?” I asked automatically. Grimlock reached up with a black glove and pulled the brim of his wide hat lower.