It was a far cry from a shout of victory. Beside him, Utai offered a faint, wry smile. UI> VERY NICE WORK, ARITA. IN THE SECOND DUEL AGAINST POUND BAG, YOU DISPLAYED SOME FAIRLY STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP.
At a glance, the words spelled out in the chat window were ones of praise, but they also pointed out by omission that his leadership hadn’t quite reached the domain of “fully,” even in the first duel against Prominence.
Shrinking into himself, Haruyuki tried an excuse on the fourth grader, who was still very much his senior. “If you’d at least designated me leader in advance, I could have mentally prepared a little more.”
UI> IN ALL SITUATIONS, YOU MUST ADAPT TO THE MOMENT!
“Y-yeah, I guess so…But it’s really great that Curren came back, huh? And now we have a lot more leeway in the formation of teams for the Territories.”
He had no sooner uttered this in the most offhand way than Utai pursed her lips adorably and glared up at him. With that look still on her face, she tapped quickly at her holokeyboard with both hands. UI> WHEN DID YOU FIND OUT, ARITA? THAT REN WAS COMING BACK TO NEGA NEBULUS?
“Th-the night before last.” Faced with the question, Haruyuki couldn’t hide it any longer. At any rate, he had said before the Territories that it was a secret for the reason of happy faces. “So it still hasn’t been forty-eight hours! I was surprised, you know. Curren suddenly showed up in the middle of the Battle Royale and saved me and Ash. A-and, look, you just said you have to adapt—”
UI> I WAS TALKING ABOUT IN THE DUEL! she typed forcefully—until her expression abruptly softened.
The light reflected in her large eyes increased bit by bit as they gazed up at Haruyuki. A point of light, the color of the evening sun spilling through a gap in the cloudy sky, finally turned into a drop of water and ran down her cheek.
Haruyuki opened both eyes wide, and cherry-colored text slowly scrolled across his field of view. UI> I’M SURE THIS TIME IS ALSO BECAUSE YOU WERE HERE, ARITA.
“Huh…? Th-this time…?”
UI> IT’S BECAUSE YOU MADE SUCH SINCERE EFFORTS THAT FU AND ME AND SACCHI WERE ABLE TO RETURN TO NEGA NEBULUS. SO I JUST KNOW IT’S THE SAME FOR REN.
“I—I didn’t do anything. In fact, Master and you and, of course, Kuroyukihime all came back to help me. And—I mean—Curren, too.”
UI> YOU SHOULD BE PROUD OF THAT. Utai wiped away the tear with her right hand and stared for a moment at the transparent droplet on her fingertip.
Shifting her gaze to Haruyuki once more, the girl four years his junior opened her lips into a circle. Her mouth strained and trembled. Tendons popped up in her slender neck and twitched.
“Sh-Shinomiya…!” Haruyuki called her name hoarsely. Utai had lost her voice from shock on the day of the accidental death of her real-life older brother and Burst-Linker parent, Kyoya Shinomiya. The only things she could utter in her real voice were two voice commands related to Brain Burst, made possible through years of practice.
The aphasia presented in her voice, but it was an impediment in the functioning of her brain. Utai’s condition was classified as subcortical expressive aphasia, and while it was possible for her to understand and write words normally, spontaneous language—speech with her real voice—was difficult. A neural blockage in the part of the cerebrum called the precentral gyrus was the main cause, but in Utai’s case, excessive psychological shock had brought about a malfunction of the relevant neural network, and this could not be recovered even with a brain implant chip.
So if she tried to force herself to speak with her real voice, Utai would have felt not just physical pain, but a great deal of emotional pain. Haruyuki started to raise his hand to stop her, but a moment before he could, a faint but definite sound spilled from her trembling lips into the air and reached his ears.
“Tha…”
Followed by “n.” And finally, “ks.”
By the time she finished uttering the word, beads of sweat had popped up on Utai’s forehead. Even so, a reassuring smile came across her lips, and she bowed her head to him gently.
Desperately holding back the tears that threatened to escape him, Haruyuki murmured, “Me too. Thanks, Shinomiya. For being in this place with me now…really, thank you.”
Utai lifted her head, and her face lit up with an innocent grin reminiscent of her real age.
Once the hands of the clock had come around to five thirty PM, Haruyuki slipped through the incomplete festival gate in front of the school gates, said good-bye to Utai, and headed home alone.
Not only were Kuroyukihime, Takumu, and Chiyuri still not finished getting ready for the school festival but the entire school was filled with the enthusiasm of the night before a celebration, so heading home alone was a little sad. But to stay on school grounds after the mandatory departure time of six PM, he’d have to apply for permission from the school administration to extend the working hours of the exhibition group he belonged to. And since Haruyuki’s group in eighth-grade class C had long ago reported that their work was complete, there was, of course, no way he would get that permission.
He trudged out onto Oume Highway and stared hard at the bus stop on the opposite side of the road. If he was going to be chased out of the school anyway, then he wanted to jump onto a bus like he did the day before and take a field trip to Nakano area, but unfortunately, Kuroyukihime had also prohibited that.
The reason was the Red Legion Burst Linkers who had broken the cease-fire (which Haruyuki had reported at the meeting after the Territories were over). Once she had heard the sequence of events, Kuroyukihime was silent for exactly three seconds before she muttered with annoyance, “This is their work.”
Haruyuki had a good idea of who exactly she meant, but when she announced, “I will handle this matter,” Haruyuki couldn’t bring himself to say the name. But his Legion Master had continued to speak, her words turned mainly toward Haruyuki: Until the school festival was over, no one was to duel freely outside of Suginami, or even watch a duel.
“…Well, I just have to hang on for one day…”
The school festival would end the following day—Sunday—in the afternoon, so he could assume the ban on travel outside the area would be lifted that night—probably. He hoped. And then he would go to Nakano, duel Wolfram Cerberus again, and say it one more time: Come with me.
The next week, a meeting of the Seven Kings would be held, and if they agreed that the performance of the Optical Conduction ability Haruyuki had obtained was equivalent to the Theoretical Mirror ability, then they would finally move out on the joint invasion of Tokyo Midtown Tower. He would stand in the vanguard of the attack on the Legend-class Enemy Archangel Metatron, the most powerful enemy Haruyuki had ever faced outside the God Suzaku. Before all that, he wanted to clarify the invisible threads entangling Cerberus in complex ways and sever them.
The feeling of wanting to help Cerberus was perhaps arrogant, presumptuous, and even self-serving. In no small part because it came down to whether the level-five Silver Crow and the level-one Cerberus had matching battle power as Burst Linkers.
But two nights earlier, the Cerberus that Haruyuki had faced in the real for just a few seconds, with waves of people wedged between them, had eyes that had definitely tried to make some kind of appeal to him. In which case, Haruyuki wanted to answer that call. He wanted to offer his hand, to say something as many times as it took. The way so many people had done for Haruyuki in the past.
“…I’ll definitely come see you tomorrow,” he murmured as he looked up at the fleecy clouds colored purple in the direction of Nakano, and then he started walking home.
When he had gotten into the elevator of B wing, the mail icon in the top right of his field of view started flashing. He launched his mailer, thinking it was probably from his mother, who had left the previous day on an overseas business trip and wouldn’t be back until the following evening. He expected it would be something about how she was sorry she couldn’t come see the school festival—however, the displayed s
ender was not his mother, but the single letter N.
“…Wh-who?” Cocking his head to one side, he opened the mail, which said only THERE IN FIVE SECONDS. Utterly baffled, he cocked his head to the other side, and then the elevator stopped, so he automatically stepped out.
A moment after he did so, the doors of the neighboring elevator opened. In another unconscious motion, he looked that way, and the “someone” who leapt out forcefully into the hallway snapped a finger at him.
“Hey! It’s been a long— It hasn’t, has it? Maybe five days?”
“Yea— Uh, whaaaa—?! Wh-wh-wh-why are you here?!” Throwing his head back almost too far from the shock of it all, Haruyuki just barely managed to recover his balance and get himself upright again.
“I clearly gave you notice, so you don’t need to act so surprised,” the sender of the mail who had appeared precisely five seconds after the arrival of the mail said, exasperated. “I mean, like, how many times have I been here before already?”
“Uh, um. Three, four…five…”
“It’s just a thing you say. You don’t need to go counting!” Stepping over to him briskly to whack his stomach lightly with a flat hand, the girl with red hair tied back in two bundles on either side of her head—the Red King, Scarlet Rain, aka Yuniko Kozuki, aka Niko—proffered a grin that filled her face and started walking down the hallway to the Arita apartment. Haruyuki, after a bit, managed to restart his brain and hurried after her.
Niko arrived first at the door with the plate 2305, and the instant she tapped the fingers of her right hand on it, there was the sound of the door unlocking, so he was even more stunned. “Wh-whaaaat?! You have the key to our house again?! The expiration of the instant key you had was long—”
“Oh, when you let me stay over that time, I did a little fiddling with your home server and changed it into a perpetual key, so, you know.” Niko uttered this even more terrifying statement as she took off her sneakers. “I’m coming in,” she announced a moment later, heading inside at a pace that said she knew she was the master of this home.
Halfway down the hall, Niko looked back at the still-dumbfounded boy. “I’ll entertain myself, so you can go ahead and change first,” she offered quietly, and then she disappeared into the living room.
“…Notice. I mean, people usually give five hours, not five seconds.” With no other choice, Haruyuki was stuck merely muttering his complaints.
Still, he took Niko up on her suggestion and changed from his uniform into a T-shirt and shorts before returning to the living room, where Niko was lying on her side on the two-person sofa, resting her head on a cushion. The instant he cracked an unconscious smile at seeing her so unabashedly making herself at home, she glared at him out of the corner of her eye.
“What’re you grinning about?”
“I-it’s—nada…B-barley tea okay?”
“Mmm, thanksy.”
He nodded and headed to the kitchen, poured out two glasses of barley tea, and returned to the living room, where he set himself down across from Niko. There, finally, he became aware of the slight unease residing in his heart. He cocked his head from side to side several times before finally stumbling upon the reason.
“Now that I’m thinking of it, why have you been in Normal mode right from the start today, Niko?” he asked.
“Huh?” The sixth-grade girl blinked several times before smiling complacently. “What? You want me to do it?”
She yanked herself upright and faced Haruyuki, placed her hands neatly on knees clamped together, and made a cheery, innocent smile bloom on her face. “I love my big brother, too! I’m so happy!”
She hadn’t activated this angel mode at the curry party five days earlier, so he actually hadn’t seen it in a long time, and it had a real impact on his mind. For a while, his upper body was frozen while he whipped his head back and forth.
“I—I don’t hate it, but that’s not what I meant. I was just wondering why!” The instant he said this, Haruyuki finally realized that he already knew the reason. Not just why Niko wasn’t in angel mode, but the reason she was making the sudden visit at all.
He took a deep breath and held it in his chest for a while before exhaling. “A-anyway, that is…The reason you’re here…is obviously to talk about what happened in the Unlimited Neutral Field yesterday, right?”
Niko’s face returned to normal, and she slowly leaned back until she flopped up against the sofa back. She nodded, using the reaction of the cushions to help her do it. “Well, there’s that too,” she said somewhat listlessly. “But that’s a third of the reason.”
“Huh? Then what are the other two-thirds?”
“You know half at least. An apology. Gotta apologize.”
“An apology. You mean to say you’re here to say sorry?”
“O’course! I mean, you think I’m here to get all wabi-sabi with you and barley tea?”
“H-huh? Niko, you know about tea meanings and stuff?”
“Don’t go underestimatin’ me! I might look be a kid, but I was in the tea club at school once!”
“Once…So then you’ve quit already?”
“Shaddap! I went all the way, mastered that stuff! So.” Perhaps noticing that at some point she had leaned forward on the sofa and leapt to her feet, Niko blinked several times before a wry smile rose upon her lips. “Aah, honestly, I wonder why I always get like this when I talk to you. Gets me all worked up. Before we fly off on another tangent, first I’m gonna give you that apology!”
After this crisp announcement, Niko brought her skinny legs together and slapped her hands down on her knees. Then she bowed her head deeply, her tied-back hair and its small black ribbons swinging. “As Legion Master, I sincerely apologize for the three members of Prominence who broke the cease-fire and attacked the Nega Nebulus area in the Territories today! I’m very sorry!”
Haruyuki very nearly smiled at this apology, given the mismatch between the grandiose preamble and the cuteness of her pigtails, but he hurriedly stiffened his mouth at the same time as Niko lifted her face.
“Make sure you tell that to your little Blacky,” Niko added smoothly, while he was struggling to figure out how to respond.
“Huh?! M-me?!”
“O’course! What’s the point of me apologizing to just you, at the bottom of the Legion ladder?!”
“B-bottom…Th-th-th-then you should’ve gone to see her right from the start instead of me!”
“Got no choice. This is the only place I know. Aah, c’mon, then I take back the whole ladder thing and promote you to Mysterious Crow Man.”
“I-is that a promotion? Why does this hierarchy sound like an evil organization—” He realized they were starting to get off track once again, cleared his throat, and closed his mouth. Setting aside what he wanted to say for the moment, he nodded. “Understood. I’ll tell the Black King. But none of us, not me, not Kuroyukihime, not any of the other Legion members, think Blaze Heart and the others were unequivocally wrong in attacking our territory. They had a motive that wouldn’t let them do anything else. So if possible, can you not punish them too harshly, Niko?”
“I was wondering what you’d say, and that’s where you start, huh?” Chuckling, Niko clasped her hands behind her head and nodded lightly. “Well, I obviously can’t let them off scot-free, but I’m thinking I’ll leave it at double the number of attacks during Enemy hunting next week. That said, though, I mean, me, the head of Promi— Can I just be done with an apology in words with no action to go along with it? That’s the question.”
“A-action? Meaning?” Haruyuki asked, suddenly turning semiformal.
Niko glanced at him before stopping once more and bringing her clenched hands to her chest and grinning broadly. “Whaaaat, big brother, is there something you want me to do? Cleaning? Washing? Or…”
“N-no, no, no! You don’t have to do anything! And I mean, it’s ’cos you keep doing that and putting us off track that the conversation goes in weird directions, right?�
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“Weiiiird directions? Like what? I only said that I would help with the housework, though? So then, you must have imagined something weird. Big brother, you’re so kinky. ” She maintained the smile at the end for about two seconds, and then smoothly shifted modes and continued. “That just now was good for a ’pology accompanied by action, yeah?”
“U-unh…When you switch modes like that, it kinda makes my head spin, though…”
“Then I’ll go a little faster for you! So, like, Crow…The real issue is that incident in the Unlimited Neutral Field you started in on before.”
“Unnnh, y-yeah.” He nodded, holding his head in his hands.
“Crow.” Niko, her face now completely the Red King, stared at Haruyuki with a sharp light in her eyes. “You got an idea about the truth of the situation, yeah?”
“Huh? T-truth?”
“…So, like, I don’t think that was the real Lotus riding on the back of that Legend-class, either. I only saw it for a short time, but the information pressure was totally different…”
Niko’s words kick-started Haruyuki’s thinking, and he quickly summarized in his mind all the information he’d obtained so far.
According to Blaze Heart and her comrades, the Red Legion had been hunting Enemies in the Unlimited Neutral Field the day before—Friday—in a large group of more than twenty people, including the leader, Scarlet Rain. The location: Toshima area; in other words, near Ikebukuro. There, a Legend-class Enemy with a single duel avatar riding on its back appeared suddenly and attacked. The avatar immediately disappeared as if diving into the surface of the ground, and Niko and her group just barely managed to run from the rampaging Enemy to escape through a portal. And the avatar riding the Enemy in question had jet-black armor and sharp limbs like swords…
“Do you mean that the information pressure of the black avatar you saw…was stronger than Kuroyukihime’s?” Haruyuki asked, ever so timidly.
To his surprise, the Red King shook her head. “The opposite. It was a fair bit weaker than Lotus. I mean, my eyes basically couldn’t see the pressure.”
Signal Fire at the Water’s Edge Page 12
