Shrine Maiden of the Sacred Fire

by Reki Kawahara

  “It’s fine, whatever. A man doesn’t go out looking for gratitude.” Muttering and grumbling in a tone far from the hard-boiled sentiment it was attached to, Haruyuki passed behind the gloomy old school building and walked over to the hutch.

  Thanks to a day of sun, the tiles on the floor were completely dry. And the mountain of old leaves piled up in front of the chicken wire was also well on its way toward total dryness; he’d probably be able to stuff them in a bag and throw them out the next day. Checking out the results of his own work felt pretty good, so he stood there for a moment, staring vacantly at the hutch.

  So when a window requesting an ad hoc connection abruptly appeared in the center of his gaze, he was just as surprised as he had been the day before. His head flew back momentarily before he looked around and saw a small figure standing a little ways off: sharply trimmed front fringe and a ponytail tied back tightly. Brown backpack shouldered on a snow-white dress-type uniform. Fourth-grade student at Matsunogi Academy elementary section, Utai Shinomiya.

  “Oh! H-hello!” He quickly tapped the OK button in the request window while he greeted her.

  Instantly, characters started flowing across the chat window that opened automatically. UI> HELLO, ARITA. I APOLOGIZE FOR BEING LATE. I ASKED THE ADMINISTRATOR HERE TO RECEIVE SOME EQUIPMENT AND RECORD SOME DATA, WHICH TOOK A WHILE.

  As before, she was a demon with the keyboard. He had to read the characters twice, they were input so fast; his eyes couldn’t keep up with it. But unable to completely understand their meaning regardless, Haruyuki raised his face and asked, “R-receive equipment? What do you…?” It was then that he noticed a fairly large carrier at Utai’s feet. Given that the whole thing was made of a hard-looking plastic, he couldn’t actually see inside of it, but Utai must have had a pretty hard time getting it over here by herself.

  “Oh, that? If you’re going to take out whatever’s in there, I’ll help you,” Haruyuki said, and started to walk over to the case.

  But for some reason, Utai thrust her right hand out in front of her, and typed at the same time with her left hand. UI> THIS IS NOT THAT. I AM TERRIBLY SORRY, BUT I’D LIKE YOU TO PLEASE NOT COME NEAR THIS CARRIER FOR A WHILE. I’LL EXPLAIN THE REASON LATER. AND THE EQUIPMENT…IT LOOKS LIKE IT’S COMING NOW.

  Just as she said—or rather, typed—the sound of footsteps crunching along the ground reached Haruyuki’s ears. When he turned his gaze, walking toward them was a young man in a delivery company uniform. He was carrying long and slender treelike things on both shoulders.

  “Is this where these go?” the delivery guy asked.

  Utai moved both hands quickly. She apparently had an ad hoc connection with him, too. UI> YES. I’M SORRY, BUT PLEASE CARRY THEM INTO THAT HUTCH. PLEASE PUT ONE INSIDE TO THE LEFT AND THE OTHER TO THE RIGHT.

  “Sure thing!” With the energetic reply, the deliveryman walked briskly in front of Haruyuki. The things on his shoulders looked like trees—no, they were trees, complete with several thin branches stretching out, from the end of a trunk about a meter and eighty centimeters long. The branches had no leaves, and a heavy-looking brace was attached at the base of each. They were artificial.

  The delivery man brought the two long trees deftly in through the open entrance, placed them inside in the shade, and turned around.

  Utai typed out detailed placement instructions. UI> MOVE THAT ONE TWENTY CENTIMETERS OR SO TO THE RIGHT. YES, THERE’S PERFECT.

  When the deliveryman came out of the hutch, he presented a receipt holotag, and Utai signed it electronically. “Thanks!” he said, and raced off, leaving just Haruyuki, Utai, the strange trees, and the mysterious carrier.

  From the other side of the chicken wire, Haruyuki stared upward, dumbfounded, at the tall trees. The trunk of each was probably around seven or eight centimeters in diameter. The surfaces were smooth and polished, but they definitely were not new. Most likely, the animal that was going to live in this hutch used them. Now that he was thinking about it, Haruyuki still hadn’t been told what type of animal it was.

  Usually, it was a rabbit or a chicken or something of that nature in a school Animal Care Club. But if this animal needed these big trees…Some kind of monkey? A chameleon? It couldn’t be a sloth, could it?

  Haruyuki gulped, and Utai next to him typed briefly.

  UI> NOW THEN, I’M GOING TO PUT THIS ONE INTO THE HUTCH. I’M SURE HE’LL FLY AROUND FOR A BIT, SO ONCE I’M INSIDE, PLEASE CLOSE THE DOOR FIRMLY BEHIND ME.

  Reflexively, he looked at the large carrier. Her words meant that what was inside was the problem animal. And it flying around meant—some kind of bird. Those things that had been brought into the hutch were perches. Thinking about it, he realized an elementary school Animal Care Club wouldn’t have a monkey or a chameleon. It was probably a parrot or a mynah or some other big bird.

  In his heart, with the doubtful thought Seriously? Haruyuki watched as Utai cautiously carried the case in. Once she was through the door, he asked abruptly, “Um, Shinomiya, can I come in, too?”

  Utai took a moment to think before nodding decisively. UI> IT SHOULD BE OKAY. BUT YOU CAN’T SCARE HIM, SO I WANT YOU TO JUST STAND QUIETLY. HE’S A BIT SHY.

  “O-okay, got it.” He followed Utai into the hutch, closed the chicken wire door, and slid the bar over to lock it.

  After checking this herself, Utai put the carrier on the floor, followed by her backpack. From inside, she took out something unfamiliar—a long, sturdy leather glove. She slipped it over her left arm with practiced ease and then opened and closed her hand a few times. Next, turning toward the carrier and crouching down, she gently opened up the sliding doors on both sides. Slowly, cautiously, she put her left hand into the darkness inside, enveloped in the leather glove a soldier-class character in an RPG might equip.

  Excitedly wondering if it was a parakeet or maybe a bigger parrot—since you wouldn’t need a solid glove like that for a little bird—Haruyuki watched Utai move. She peered into the carrier and seemed to be saying something. Naturally, her voice made no sound and her lips weren’t moving, either, but even still, Haruyuki felt like he could hear a gentle whisper calling the creature.

  A few seconds later, she started carefully pulling her arm back out. Her wrist appeared, the back of her hand, then loosely stretched-out fingertips, and on those, two feet holding on tightly. Just as Haruyuki had expected, it was a bird. Its feathers were gray, almost white. It was big, but not to the point of huge. Maybe a little over twenty centimeters in length. So then it was a parrot—

  Or not.

  Utai stood up slowly, and the instant his eyes locked with those of the bird resting on the fingers of her left hand, Haruyuki desperately struggled to keep himself from shrieking in shock.

  Round, full face. Large, downward-curving beak, and feathers sticking up on both sides of its head like ears. And more than anything, the perfectly round eyes with reddish-yellow irises.

  It was an owl—no, a horned owl…a bird of prey. A carnivore, a hunter, a tough number, a bird that could easily take a crow in a fight.

  Of course, this was not the first time he had seen this kind of bird. When he had been taken to the Ueno Zoo a long, long time ago, there had been much larger owls and even larger eagles. But it was a completely different story when he was facing one with nothing separating him from it, and certainly not so close up, only a meter and a half apart. It could come flying at him at any second and peck at his cheeks in lieu of a snack.

  Caught up in these imaginings, even his fingertips frozen, he was unable to pull his gaze away from the large eyes of the horned owl.

  In the chat window in the lower part of his vision, cherry blossom–colored characters spelled out words. UI> YOU NEEDN’T BE SO AFRAID. IN FACT, THIS LITTLE ONE IS MORE AFRAID OF YOU RIGHT NOW.

  “What…R-really?” he said, extremely quietly, and relaxed his shoulders the slightest bit. When he did, the horned owl also slackened its gaze ever so slightly and cocked its round head. This gesture was unexpe
ctedly cute, and Haruyuki involuntarily softened his lips. “That’s…a horned owl, right? What species?”

  The answer was immediately displayed before him. UI> IT’S CALLED A NORTHERN WHITE-FACED OWL. IT’S NOT A SPECIES NATIVE TO JAPAN, BUT ONE THAT’S IMPORTED AS A PET OR BRED IN CAPTIVITY.

  “Wow. So then Matsunogi’s Animal Care Club imported it?”

  Of course that’s the kind of animal they’d have at a rich-girl school, he thought as he asked the question, but Utai shook her head softly.

  UI> THAT’S NOT THE CASE. THE SITUATION IS SOMEWHAT COMPLICATED. IT’S A LONG STORY, SO I’LL EXPLAIN IT TO YOU ANOTHER TIME.

  He nodded and looked back at the horned owl. The way it whirled its head around to look at the interior of the hutch, it did somehow look uneasy. But when he thought about it, it had just been brought from the living quarters it was familiar with to this unknown place, so it was probably no wonder it was scared.

  Haruyuki had never had anything resembling a pet. In fact, he basically had no memory of even touching an animal that was someone else’s pet. So this was his first attempt to imagine what an animal before him might be feeling.

  “There’s nothing to be scared of.” At some point, a quiet voice had slipped past his lips. “This is your home. Shinomiya and I worked really hard to clean it up. No one’s gonna pick on you or anything here.”

  Its safe place had been taken from it. Haruyuki knew only too well how hard and scary that was. During the worst period of the previous year, the only place at the school for him in the real world had been a stall in the boys’ washroom on the third floor of the old school building, and the squash corner on the local net’s virtual world.

  But someone had suddenly come to Haruyuki one day, flapping black butterfly wings, and pulled him up from the bottom of that deep hole. In that moment, everything in his life changed. He learned about an incredibly wide new world, met so many people, and gained a precious place of his own.

  The horned owl—no, white-faced owl—before him had had its home taken away by the logic of a heartless corporation and had very narrowly avoided being killed. However, thanks to Utai’s earnest efforts, it had found a new place here. I want to do whatever I can, no matter how small, to make sure it lives a long and happy life in this hutch, this time for sure. Although he had no idea whether or not the owl understood his feelings.

  Abruptly spreading both wings, the owl flew forcefully from Utai’s hand and drew circle after circle in the four-by-four-meter space of the hutch. The evening sun bathed the white-and-gray plumage of its flapping wings, and Haruyuki almost gasped at how beautiful it was. It was just for a few seconds, but he felt his own body become light as if he were flying around with it himself. Eventually, the snow-faced owl grabbed on to a branch of the perch on the left side with sturdy talons, flapped its wings two or three times, and then quietly settled down.

  The large reddish-gold eyes narrowed suddenly, the ear-like feathers flattened, and it pulled its right leg up to stand on one leg. It stayed in this position and stopped moving, as though it had gone to sleep.

  UI> IT SEEMS AS THOUGH HE LIKES THIS PLACE.

  “H-he does? That’s great,” Haruyuki murmured in reply.

  UI> PERHAPS IT’S BECAUSE YOU SPOKE SO KINDLY TO HIM, ARITA. THANK YOU. Utai dipped her head neatly, causing her ponytail to swing.

  “Th-that’s totally not it.” Haruyuki hurriedly shook his head and waved his hands in tiny increments. “Shinomiya, you’ve done so much for him. A-and, right, what’s the snow-faced owl’s name anyway?” he asked.

  Utai lifted her face and blinked several times before grinning. UI> THAT’S RIGHT. I HAVEN’T TOLD YOU THE MOST IMPORTANT PART. HIS NAME IS HOO. IT WAS DECIDED BY A SCHOOL-WIDE VOTE. HE’S MALE, PROBABLY ABOUT THREE YEARS OLD.

  So “Hoo” because it was an owl; that was a fairly obvious name. But did this snow-faced owl actually say hoo hoo? And what exactly was the difference between a snow-faced owl and a regular one?

  Because he was scrolling through questions like this in his mind, Haruyuki didn’t immediately realize that there was something he should have been more curious about in Utai’s explanatory text. By the time he stopped short with a “Huh?,” Utai was already clutching the carrier and heading toward the door. Having no other choice, Haruyuki followed her.

  After cautiously opening the door so that the snow-faced owl, Hoo, didn’t fly out and stepping outside before closing it again, Utai pulled a small plastic container from the bottom of the carrier, put some water in it, and went back inside. She gently placed the dish on a branch of the perch and came back out.

  UI> WE CAN LOCK UP FOR TODAY NOW. I’LL SET UP THE POOL FOR HIM TO PLAY IN AND THE SENSOR TO MANAGE HIS WEIGHT TOMORROW.

  “Wh-what about food? You don’t need to feed him?”

  UI> I FED HIM BEFORE WE LEFT THE OLD HUTCH. HE GETS FED ONCE A DAY, SO I’LL COME AND FEED HIM EVERY DAY AFTER SCHOOL.

  Her words reminded him of Utai’s explanation the day before that, due to certain circumstances, the bird would no longer allow anyone else to feed him. He wondered what these circumstances might be, while the nagging doubt he had felt earlier came back to life. He scrolled up in the chat window and double-checked Utai’s messages. It was definitely there at the end of the sentence with Hoo’s name and sex: “probably about three years old.”

  Cocking his head inwardly at the idea that they wouldn’t know the age of an animal kept at the school, Haruyuki went to execute his duty for that day as the president of the Animal Care Club. He opened his bag and pulled out the brand-new, stainless steel, electronic U-lock he had gotten at the administration office on the first floor of the second school building. After turning it on and connecting it to his Neurolinker, he entered the code to unlock it that was given only to members of the Animal Care Club.

  It snapped open. He slipped the U part through the metal fixture on the door of the animal hutch and set the bar in it, automatically locking it again. Haruyuki yanked on it to check it was securely locked, and then turned back to Utai.

  “Okay, then, I should give you the lock code, too, Shinomiya.”

  UI> PLEASE DO.

  He copied the code from the lock menu window and sent it to her. That way, even if he wasn’t there, Utai would be able to come and feed Hoo. And that completed that day’s club activities. He signed the log file and submitted it to the in-school net.

  Finally, he turned his gaze one last time on the snow-faced owl sitting in the gloom inside the hutch, and its large eyes looked at Haruyuki for an instant before closing once again.

  From now on, I’ll be taking care of Hoo, too. I have a responsibility to work hard to make sure he has a happy, comfortable life here. With this thought, a nervousness strangled him, but it was accompanied by a strange warmth blossoming in his chest. As he stood there, stock-still, hands clenched, Utai’s cherry-colored font flowed soundlessly before his eyes.

  UI> NOW THEN, LET’S TURN TOWARD OUR NEXT TASK, ARITA.

  “Huh? Our next task? But today’s club work’s already—”

  UI> IT’S NOT A CLUB TASK. IT’S ABOUT WHAT TO DO ABOUT THE ISS KITS AND THE ARMOR OF CATASTROPHE.

  “……Oh.” His mind spinning momentarily at the abrupt and enormous change of topic, Haruyuki looked at Utai Shinomiya’s small, uniformed figure.

  Now that he was thinking about it, she wasn’t just a younger girl who loved animals—she was the level-seven Burst Linker Ardor Maiden, owner of a wide range of attack powers of terrifying force, and one of the Four Elements who had been executives of the first Nega Nebulus.

  Even after the tag team match the day before had ended and he had returned to Suginami Ward in the real world, Haruyuki had remained preoccupied for a while. He watched absently as Utai tucked the direct cable away in her backpack after calmly pulling it out of her Neurolinker before he finally came back to his senses, and immediately asked about the thing that had been nagging at him during the duel. “Your avatar has the power of purif
ication, Shinomiya? You can get rid of parasitic objects?!”

  However, the answer that came back to him in text was not definite.

  UI> EVEN IF I CAN, IT TAKES A VERY LONG TIME. A MINIMUM OF THIRTY MINUTES FOR A LITTLE OBJECT LIKE THE ONE WE SAW BEFORE. FOR A STRONGER PARASITE, THERE’S DEFINITELY NOT ENOUGH TIME IN A NORMAL DUEL. LET’S TALK IN MORE DETAIL ABOUT THIS TOMORROW. And then she had stood up, typed, MY HOUSE IS JUST OVER THERE, SO I’LL BE FINE FROM HERE, and bowed her head deeply before disappearing into the residential area.

  “Uh, umm.” Struggling to reconcile the figure of the shrine maiden dancing gently in the center of a grassy field enveloped in roaring flames with the slender girl before his eyes now, Haruyuki somehow managed to make his mouth move. “R-right, we have to talk over a bunch of stuff in regards to that today. We probably won’t finish up before seven at school, so at my house—I mean, I already told Kuroyukihime and the others that, but…is that okay with you, Shinomiya?”

  For some reason, her brow twitched and stiffened, and she typed out fairly slowly, UI> IF THAT IS THE CASE, THEN I BELIEVE I WOULD ALSO LIKE TO INTRUDE UPON YOU.

  “Oh. Maybe it’s tough for you after all, if it gets too late?”

  UI> NO, THAT’S NOT A PROBLEM. WILL ALL THE CURRENT MEMBERS BE COMING TOGETHER AT THIS MEETING? SPECIFICALLY, FU?

  Fu—i.e., Fuko Kurasaki, aka Sky Raker. Kuroyukihime had asked him to get in touch with her, too, and she had readily assented to join them. Haruyuki nodded—“Of course”—and Utai looked downward with an even more complicated expression.

  Maybe they don’t get along? I didn’t really get that impression when they were talking about old times in the student council office yesterday, though…

  While Haruyuki hemmed and hawed with these thoughts, Utai raised both hands with a curiously determined look and tapped at her holokeyboard. UI>