Signal Fire at the Water’s Edge

by Reki Kawahara

  The moment his wandering thoughts reached this place, Haruyuki nodded with a somewhat stiff smile and ran his fingers across his virtual desktop.

  Since, legally, they couldn’t all three of them ride, no matter how big the motorcycle was, they decided to meet up again at the festival once it started, and Haruyuki went to school on foot.

  Normally, there would still be a slight sleepiness left in the core of his head, but that day, his head was clear because he had gotten up early to tweak the class display files, and that early rising was topped off by the excitement of the festival itself. He walked slightly faster than usual, along a sidewalk that felt different from the usual weekday style, and once he crossed Oume Highway and proceeded a little farther, the front gates of his destination, Umesato Junior High, came into view.

  The festival gates rose up immediately inside the pillars of the main gate, the painstaking work of the group that made them, composed mostly of the school festival committee. The theme that year was “time,” and to go along with that, the design took on a motif of an analogue clock face. Made out of gold synthetic paper, it looked spectacular, but the team that made it was probably breathing a sigh of relief that it was sunny that day.

  As he approached the front gates, several groups of students were waiting for their turn to have memorial photos taken. Normally, saving screenshots of your field of view on school grounds was prohibited (naturally, Kuroyukihime managed to be exempt), but on that day, it was allowed in certain areas. Haruyuki walked along, carefully watching for the right moment to quickly slip through once the group of boys lined up inside the gate was done taking their pictures.

  “Oh! Arita! You get in here, too!” someone shouted, and he very nearly tripped and fell.

  When he looked, he saw a tall boy with a shaved head waving his right hand. It was a member of the basketball team from his class named Ishio. Around him were also the sporty guys from eighth-grade class C, and inwardly, Haruyuki screeched. But over these last few months, Haruyuki had gained the mental strength to not simply run away right then and there…he thought. Probably.

  Bracing himself, Haruyuki shouted “S-sure!” as he ran toward the gate. Ishio and the others had apparently wholeheartedly embraced the festival feel at that early hour, and when Haruyuki joined their ranks, they shouted, “Yay!” and flashed peace signs. Somehow managing to produce a smile and the same pose, Haruyuki traded places with the picture taker and took a picture of his classmates, and then they exchanged images.

  “The basketball team’s doing a free-throw game. Come by later!” Ishio shouted.

  “I’ll be there!” Haruyuki replied, then he broke away. As he walked toward the entrance, he let out a long sigh.

  His first task was to launch and do the final check of the class exhibit program in his classroom. The school festival started at nine thirty, so he’d go and meet Niko and Pard at the front gates then. Rin Kusakabe was supposed to arrive at the school by ten, so they’d meet up with her, and then he’d take them to the crepe booth that Chiyuri’s girls’ track-and-field team was running.

  Here, Haruyuki finally realized that with this timetable, Rin and Niko and Pard would inevitably have their first meeting in the real. Naturally, he would have to introduce the two sides, but what exactly was he supposed to say? If he explained with something like “This is Ash Roller from GW. And these are Scarlet Rain and Blood Leopard from Promi,” the air would instantly freeze. And it wouldn’t stop at that. Most definitely not.

  That said, it definitely wouldn’t fly for him to show one of them around and leave the others to their own devices. The only thing for him to do was come up with some way of introducing them so that each didn’t realize the other was a Burst Linker.

  “…So then I guess all I can say is we’re friends. Saying ‘gaming friends’ might even be too risky. So then curry friends. No, no…” He considered the problem intently as he changed his shoes and started to walk down the hallway toward the first school building, and then someone tapped his back lightly from behind.

  “What are you so troubled about on the day of the school festival, Haruyuki?”

  “Um, it’s just I handed out invitations without actually thinking ahead.”

  “Oh? To whom?”

  “Right, one to— Wait, waaah?!” He visually confirmed the figure of the student council vice president walking alongside him and jumped slightly before quickly bowing his head. “G-good morning, Kuroyukihime!”

  “Mmm, morning. So then who did you invite to the festival, I wonder?” Kuroyukihime posed the question once more, grinning.

  “Uh, um…,” Haruyuki replied, a fairly stiff smile spreading across his face. “I-I-I’ll introduce you later! A-a-anyway! Have you finished getting ready with the student council?”

  “Mmm. Well, I suppose. We’ll be revealing our program at two, using the entire school grounds, so do come see it if you can. With your mysterious friends.”

  “Y-yeah, we’ll definitely be there.” Haruyuki nodded, and it seemed like Kuroyukihime would be kind enough to put the matter of the invitations on hold for now.

  She gave his back a little push to change directions before stopping in a corner of the hallway and then cleared her throat lightly. “I was going to notify the Legion members with a mail or something later,” she said in a slightly hushed voice. “But in the event that we’re attacked today by a new Burst Linker or an ISS kit user, don’t go out of your way to fight. All of us will be in the Gallery, so we can identify the enemy position from the guide cursor and crack them in the real. Naturally, if you’re in the Gallery, make sure you don’t forget to check the guide cursor.”

  “Right, I understand. But will there be an attack?”

  “Mmm. I think the probability is vanishingly small, but…Actually, at the festival last year and the year before, not only was there no attack, there wasn’t even anyone slipping into the local net. But the rumor is that yesterday…” Here, she closed her mouth briefly and leaned up against the hallway wall, turning her sharp eyes to the south—toward Setagaya.

  They were down to one hour before the curtain went up on the school festival, and the air in the school was filled with an excitement that was a jumble of expectation and nervous tension. Alongside groups running around with frenzied looks on their faces, apparently still getting ready, fully finished, smiling students brought their heads together and peered at holowindows, planning out what they would see first.

  As for Haruyuki, he had spent the whole day of the festival the previous year on tenterhooks, trying not to run into his bullies, so he naturally intended to enjoy it to the fullest this year. But Kuroyukihime’s words now concerned him, and his body stiffened up as he asked in reply, “Y-you can’t mean…an attack on a school near Shimokitazawa again yesterday?”

  “No, according to my investigation, there were no schools holding their festivals yesterday. But it appears to be a fact that Magenta Scissor and her subordinates appeared frequently in the area. I can’t imagine they’d invade the territory of Great Wall for no reason.”

  “So then it might be reconnaissance for their next attack?”

  “That’s possible, but schools with their festivals at this time of year are fairly rare.”

  “Normally, it’s in September or October, after all. I wonder why Umesato’s is in June?”

  “That’s a mystery with a long history of being dissected at our fine school. One theory has it that the character for ‘ume’ is the same as the one in the word for ‘rainy season,’ but if that were the case, then that would mean they set the festival for the time of year with the most rainy days, which is utterly absurd. But on the other hand, although the festival is in June, the weather’s strangely sunny, so that’s another fairly illogical thing—though that’s not the point.”

  She cleared her throat and got back on track before bringing her beautiful face close to Haruyuki’s. “Basically, what I’m trying to say is that, if there are very few schools holding their
festivals at this time of year, then we must consider the possibility at least that Magenta and her group will bring their campaign to Umesato. And it appears that invitations were traded on the Net, albeit only a few.”

  “What? But can’t they only be sent through an ad hoc connection?”

  “You can get around a limit like that pretty easily. Every year, I write an opinion letter that we should introduce resident net authentication and restrict invitations to family and relatives of students, but every time, it’s rejected by the administration. Well, this year at least, thanks to the loose rules, we were able to invite Fuko, Utai, and Akira, so I suppose that’s good.”

  “Oh, good! You invited Master and the others!”

  “Hmm? That’s an excessively happy look on your face, isn’t it? I suppose I should ask now just who you invited,” Kuroyukihime said with a hard look in her eyes, so this time it was Haruyuki clearing his throat and getting the conversation back on track.

  “Uh, um, at any rate, we should be careful of attacks, right! It might be better to register tag teams for all the Legion members in advance, huh? So I’ll be with y—”

  “Me and Fuko, Akira and Utai should be good. We’ll have Takumu team up with Chiyuri, so you team up with one of the friends you invited.”

  “R-right, understood.” He bobbed his head.

  “Oh-ho.” Kuroyukihime’s gaze was icy. “So you did invite a Burst Linker, and a student from another school at that. I’m looking forward to being introduced to them.”

  “Nngh! Oh, that, it’s—” Easily caught in the leading question, Haruyuki felt a cold sweat pop up all over when he was saved by the nine o’clock bell. “Oh! I—I—I have to go do the final check for the class exhibit! S-s-s-so then, I’ll be in contact with you later, Kuroyukihime!”

  “That you’re able to run away like that now, you’ve grown, hmm?” Kuroyukihime evaluated him even more coolly, and then smiled with wry exasperation. “Then I’ll see you later. I’ll definitely stop by and see the exhibit in grade-eight class C.”

  “I-it’s nothing amazing, but I’ll be waiting for you! All right, then!” Turning around after a final bow, Haruyuki dashed up to the second floor.

  The hallway in front of his classroom was decorated with plastic garlands and synthetic paper tape, divorced from its everyday feel. Grade-eight class A was doing the school festival staple of the haunted house, while class B was handling the café, so it seemed like they’d have a lot of visitors with just that.

  In contrast, Haruyuki’s class C was doing an exhibition entitled “Koenji Thirty Years Ago,” and the content and decorations were the very definition of subdued. Because there were only seven people left to take charge of the class exhibit, any kind of major plan had been impossible right from the get-go; Haruyuki felt sorry for the guests who would come to see such an unenthusiastic offering.

  Thus, after getting the approval of the other members of the group, Haruyuki had added a few tricks to the exhibit. He hurried to the classroom and found that the other six had already gathered there, and he was about to shrink apologetically into himself when a voice came flying his way:

  “Arita, you’re laaaate!” The shouter was Ikuzawa, the class C representative. She belonged to the Calligraphy Club, but she had also volunteered to help with the class exhibit, given how few people were on that team. She was a very serious, good person.

  And now she shook her head, hair tied off to one side, and continued briskly, “You took the exhibit file home to make some adjustments, so you’re the only one who can launch it, you know! If we don’t hurry and check the operation, we won’t be in time for the start of the festival, now, will we?!”

  “S-sor—” Haruyuki started to apologize at full power when someone patted his shoulder lightly. It was Oka, a boy with long hair bleached right up to the edge of school regulations, who proudly named himself a member of the Go Home Club.

  “C’mon, Ikuzawa. I mean, he is late, but by thirty seconds. Arita’s been busy, too, y’know. I went by the shoe lockers before, an’ there he was with the student council vice pres—”

  “Ah! L-let’s hurry and check the exhibit! Yes, let’s do that! I’ll get it ready right now!” Haruyuki interjected with panic, and then he looked around the classroom. All the desks and chairs had been carried out, and in their place, a path in the shape of a C had been laid out with large panels. The seven team members were near the entrance of the pathway.

  Having confirmed all this, Haruyuki reached a hand out to his virtual desktop. He first uploaded to the local school net the file he had just finished working on at seven that morning. He then ran the AR display program, and a dialogue box popped up in his field of view, asking him if he wanted to accept the connection.

  The other six members of the group moved their fingers at the same time as Haruyuki to push the YES button. There was a whooshing sound effect, and then the look of the entire classroom was overwritten.

  The plastic tiles of the floor became gray asphalt road, the ceiling a bright and clear sunny sky. The walls to the east and west disappeared and, along with the windows on the south side, were transformed into a low guardrail. On the other side of that, a wide road was depicted, and ancient buildings were generated in the distance.

  “Wh-whoa?!” Oka cried out, and ran over to the guardrail.

  “Oh, don’t!” Haruyuki hurriedly called out. “That’s really just the wall!”

  He had made a warning window above the guardrail that said THERE IS A WALL HERE to keep people from colliding with it, but Oka pushed it aside like it was in the way, and cried out with delight, “Whoa! Cars’re driving! And they’re basically all gasoline cars. Whoa! Isn’t that a 35 GT-R?! Sounds so cool!!”

  When Haruyuki yanked earnestly at Oka’s shirt, since he was still on the verge of colliding with an invisible wall, he heard the voice of the class rep Ikuzawa behind him.

  “I get it! You mapped 3-D graphics onto the walls and the floor.”

  “Y-yeah. If we’re gonna show old photos, I figured the background should be like that, too.”

  “So then this is scenery from the 2010s?”

  “It’s a mix from around 2010, yeah. I made it by putting all the photos from the time you all collected into three-dimensional software. The car noises are real data— Oh! You can also look at the photos, of course.”

  He let go of Oka and turned back toward the wall opposite the guardrail. The large panels were also overwritten, changing into a wall of weathered brick. When he touched the surface and operated the window, countless photos appeared in poster form—scenes from the Koenji neighborhood from thirty years ago that the members of the group had collected from their own homes or from acquaintances.

  Their initial plan had simply been to share an exhibition of these photos with AR display on the white panel surface, but that was a little dull, and Haruyuki had come up with the idea of overwriting the entire classroom. But when he actually executed the idea, it was somehow…

  “…It’s like the photos are the bit player and the background’s the star now.” Ikuzawa put into words exactly what he was feeling.

  “S-sorry for just doing this.” Haruyuki reflexively shrank into himself. “If it’s in the way of the photos, I can put the background back the way it was…”

  “What’re you talking about? This is super-good!” It was Oka who cheered now, still clinging to the guardrail. “I’ve driven old cars in full-dive games, but seeing them driving along Oume Highway, it’s so real! Cool! Hey, Arita, that’s an AE 86, isn’t it?!”

  “Huh…? Which one?”

  “The first one, obviously! I’ve never seen the actual thing, and I mean, I know this isn’t real, either, but you could drive it!”

  “G-got it. I’ll take a look in the data. But, before that, Ikuzawa—” He turned back with the thought that he should talk to her, but the class rep was no longer there. Together with the other members of the group, she had moved over to the guardrail on the south wall a
nd was looking up at the town they could “see” on the other side of the road.

  He walked up alongside them and was timidly moving to start a conversation when Ikuzawa raised her left hand and pointed to the southeast. “Can you see it? That twelve-story condo over there?”

  “Huh?” He turned his eyes in that direction and saw an old mixed-use building sticking its head up over the rest of the buildings, which were overall slightly lower than they were currently. “Y-yeah. I can’t see the bottom, so I don’t know how many floors there are, though…”

  “It’s a twelve-story building. I lived on the tenth floor before. We moved a long time ago, though, and they built a new condo there.”

  “Wow, you did?” Frozen in place, he could do nothing more than offer this reply.

  Ikuzawa turned her whole body toward Haruyuki. “Thanks, Arita. I used the lack of people as an excuse and figured that if we were going to do something for the class, then this’d probably do. But like this, I just know visitors are going to be delighted.”

  “Oh…S-so then it’s okay to use it like this?”

  “Of course. Right, guys?” Ikuzawa asked everyone, and the other members of the team showed their agreement verbally. Oka alone remained pressed to the guardrail, crying out in delight each time an old sports car passed with an explosive noise.

  The tension drained out of Haruyuki’s shoulders, and with a “Phew,” he turned toward Ikuzawa and the others and bowed his head.

  The opening time of nine thirty approached, and Haruyuki stepped briskly out into the hallway to return to the front gates. He finally had to tackle the difficult task of bringing together Niko and Pard with Rin Kusakabe, but a different thought was in his head.

  What if he were a female Burst Linker? Even though he felt like Oka was a pretty good guy, when he’d approached him, with his slightly bad-boy air and his love of old cars, would he have been afraid?