Signal Fire at the Water’s Edge

by Reki Kawahara

  Haruyuki was thinking about this thanks to, of course, Niko’s confession the night before: the idea that F-type Burst Linkers who spent a long time in the Accelerated World were always dogged by a sense of helplessness and, because of that, a very real fear when they returned to the real world.

  It wasn’t an idea he couldn’t relate to. Before, Kuroyukihime had had a bristliness to her that kept people from coming over to her, even when she was in the school lounge or the VR space on the local net. Maybe the reason for that was a built-up fear due to sealing away her duel avatar for a long time.

  Niko had said that Haruyuki melted away that fear. Of course, he was absolutely not aware he could do that. In fact, he felt like he always had his hands full with just himself, and he did nothing but fail at that, unable to pay attention to the people near him. But he could swear this at least:

  I’m not going to hurt Kuroyukihime or Master or the Legion veterans or Chiyu or Taku, or Niko or Pard, and of course not Rin Kusakabe, either. No way. I’m not going to be the reason for their sadness. I’ll do whatever I can to make sure everyone can have a smile on their face all the time. First and foremost, I’ll make sure they have a super-good time at the festival today.

  Telling himself this as he changed his shoes, Haruyuki trotted across the front yard and approached the main gates. There, he spotted the two members of Prominence, both in street clothes with a keynote of red, to one side of the golden festival gates shining in the morning sun. He raised his right hand—and then froze. Because a mere meter away from the two in red, he spotted a girl in green coordinates.

  He didn’t need to see the fluffy short hair or the pouch slung across her body to know that it was Rin Kusakabe. The beloved little sister of the Burst Linker belonging to Great Wall, Ash Roller, and in a certain sense, Ash Roller himself.

  Naturally, the Red Legion Promi and the Green Legion GW had the mutual nonaggression pact between them. So the girls wouldn’t have a relationship of open hostility, but that was based precisely on a shared awareness of the fact that they were members of the six Great Legions. Currently, they didn’t actually know that right beside them was another Burst Linker, did they? In which case, the moment they found that out, it wouldn’t have been at all strange if they started to duel.

  I have to avoid that somehow, at least! Like a text or some kind of message, get one of them to move away or something…The instant he had this thought, Niko and Rin, who had been looking around at the spectacle in the area, both locked onto Haruyuki at the same time.

  They smiled in tandem and then raised their right hands in sync as well, turning toward Haruyuki. And when they both moved their faces at the same time, they stared for about two seconds at the person who was standing right next to them doing the same action as they were.

  Right then, Haruyuki was overcome with a super-sized desire to flee, but he barely succeeded in fighting it back and braced himself as he stepped forward. Now that it had come to this, his only choice was to put the situation in order before something happened between Niko and Rin. And wasn’t Kuroyukihime always saying, “Let the dogs beat a clever retreat”? Although, well, she did occasionally mean a banzai attack with the premise of dying in battle.

  Aaaaaah! A powerfully cool battle cry surging up in his heart, Haruyuki dashed over to the three girls and spoke with a broad smile. Or more precisely, he tried to speak. “S-sorry to make you wait! You’re ear—”

  “Hey, Haruyuki, who’s this girl?”

  “Um, Arita? Who. Might I ask. Is this?”

  Showered in cross fire from Niko’s glare, infused with a deep intensity, and Rin’s eyes, watery and trembling, Haruyuki stiffened up once more.

  Standing in front of him, Pard murmured with a straight face, “GL.” Good luck.

  Now that it had come to this, all he could do was jump right into it. In line with this decisive resolution, Haruyuki introduced Niko and Rin as his “gamer friends,” just like he’d initially thought he would.

  The one who reacted first, who had visited the Arita house frequently, and who knew very well that there was only one game Haruyuki was currently pouring his heart and soul into, was Niko. Turning to face Rin, she snagged the thumbs of both hands on the pockets of her cutoff jeans and jerked her chin out.

  “Which is it?”

  With just that, Rin also seemed to understand the true identity of her interlocutor. Or maybe the two of them had sensed something right from the start. Either way, clutching the hem of her light-green chiffon tunic, Rin replied in a tiny voice, “Um. Green. And you?”

  “Red. Hey, Haruyuki, lemme ask you, just in case.”

  “Y-yes.” Her glaring eyes turned on him, Haruyuki nodded without even the time to wonder at the fact that Niko was calling him by name now. “What is it?”

  “She’s not the head, right?”

  “H-head?” He cocked his own head to one side before finally understanding the meaning of the question as, “She’s not the head of Great Wall, i.e., the Green King, Green Grandé, right?”

  “N-n-n-n-n-n-no way! Sh-sh-she’s not! Totally not!”

  “Hmm. Well, fine then— Nah, it’s not fine, but we’ll say it is for the festival at least. You’ll be hearing about it from me later, though, Haruyuki.”

  “…Yes, I’ll happily accept that…” It was true that introducing Burst Linkers from different Legions at a school festival and having them wait for him in the same place on top of that, forcing them to be cracked in the real, was the height of carelessness. Thinking he should apologize to all three once more, Haruyuki looked at each of them in turn before bowing his head. “I’m really sorry I didn’t think this through. If something bad happens because of this, I’ll take full responsibilit—”

  But here a small hand reached out from his right and grabbed hold of the material of his shirt. When he lifted his face, Rin’s gentle smile was right in front of him. “You don’t. Have to. Apologize. I’m happy, too. To have more friends.”

  “Whoa! Hey! What’re you doing there, Greenie?!” Niko shouted and, of course, grabbed his shirt from the left and yanked on it.

  Pard, watching from a little ways off as Haruyuki moved from side to side in confusion, laughed a rare laugh.

  Once the introductions were over—Niko was “Niko,” Rin was “Rin,” and for some reason, Pard gave her name as “Myah” after thinking about it for a second—and they had assembled into a peaceful four-person party, it was nine thirty, and the action committee chief announced, via a school-wide broadcast, that that school festival was officially open.

  Cheers and applause rose up throughout the school, and once these had died down, the girls’ division of the AV club began the live public broadcast, backed by some up-tempo music. The broadcast was streaming via the local net rather than through any speakers, so Haruyuki lowered the volume a bit with a control on his virtual desktop and turned back to the three girls.

  “Okay then, starting over. Welcome to the Umesato Junior High school festival. I’ll be showing you around today. Is there anything you’d particularly like to see first?”

  “Crepes!” Niko, of course, shouted immediately.

  “That’s not something to see, but something to eat…”

  “Shut up! I didn’t have breakfast this morning, so I’m starving! You’re the one who went and ran out of milk for cereal—”

  “O-o-okay! Right, first stop, the track-and-field team’s crepe stand!”

  “I. Agree.”

  “’Kay.”

  So with that, Haruyuki first led his group toward the cafeteria on the east side of the first school building. In the large space, the long tables were all pushed up against one wall that day, and in their place were several multicolored booths. There was also a refreshment area on the grounds outside, and that was the best spot, but Chiyuri and her team had lost the lottery for spaces there.

  Still, despite the fact that the festival had only just begun, the cafeteria was fairly crowded, and there were already
several people waiting in line at the crepe stand his group had their eye on. When Haruyuki and his charges queued at the back of it, a girl wearing rabbit ears said, “Welcome!” and offered them a homemade menu with pictures, so he unconsciously turned serious eyes on it.

  Surprisingly, they had over ten types of toppings, but the prices were all the same, so showing off his natural indecisiveness, Haruyuki set his eyes racing around the menu.

  “Seriously, Haru? I know I said to come to the booth, but you didn’t have to rush over here as soon as the festival started,” he heard a voice say. Jerking his head up, he saw Chiyuri grinning with fond exasperation on the other side of the griddle, a small ladle in one hand. But just as Haruyuki anticipated, that expression vanished in about three seconds. Naturally, this was because she had noticed Haruyuki’s companions. “Ohhh, huh, hmm. I see.”

  “No, it’s, that’s— It’s to build friendship between Leg…groups.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I got it. So. Are you ready to order?” Fortunately, Chiyuri, also in rabbit ears, along with a white apron, quickly took on her professional attitude again, so Haruyuki hurried to order a chocolate banana crepe.

  While Niko, Rin, and Pard chatted happily, Chiyuri fried the crepe, and then the girl who was her partner piled toppings on and handed the dish to Haruyuki, at which point he paid with the allowance charged onto his Neurolinker. Once all four of them had food, he checked to make sure there were no customers waiting and then went around to the side of the booth to ask Chiyuri in a quiet voice, “Chiyu, what time are you done here?”

  “Um, at eleven, I guess.”

  “Eleven? Okay then, let’s all go see the kendo team performance at eleven fifteen.”

  And then his childhood friend of more than ten years glanced in the direction of Niko and the others before smiling with the sense of “no choice, I guess” and nodded.

  Taking advantage of the special privilege from being first to the cafeteria, the foursome settled in at one of the round tables in the lounge and dug into their crepes. Now that he thought about it, Pard was a semi-pro pastry chef, and Niko was her apprentice, so their bar for evaluating Western-style sweets would be pretty high.

  Haruyuki waited for them each to take a bite before asking timidly, “How is it?”

  Pard, aka Myah, nodded with a serious look and offered the brief “GJ.” Niko just gave a thumbs-up with her left hand and continued chomping away.

  Relieved that the crepes had apparently passed, Haruyuki looked at Rin to his right, who, in contrast with Niko, was bringing her simple strawberry crepe to her mouth bit by bit at a slow pace.

  A little worried, Haruyuki brought his face closer and said, “Um, if you don’t like it, feel free to say so.” I can eat it for you, he started to follow up, but then he would just seem like a glutton. That said, he was afraid to ask Chiyuri to remake it for her, and his mouth was frozen half-open.

  “Oh! No. It’s not that. It’s. Very, very. Good,” Rin answered with her usual gentle smile, and then turned her gaze back on her crepe, more than 70 percent of it remaining, and continued regretfully, “…I actually had too much. For breakfast. I thought I’d be okay, but I guess. I’m pretty full. If you want, Arita, you can have it…”

  Rin offered the crepe with downcast eyes, and he reflexively started to reach for it before falling into the nth freeze state of that morning. The crepes weren’t plated, but rather rolled up into cones, so Rin’s adorable teeth marks were cut into the golden-fried batter. He wasn’t sure whether there was a logical or moral issue with overwriting that with his own large mouth.

  Perhaps sensing this conflict, Rin opened her eyes wide before saying in a vanishing voice, “Oh! I-I’m sorry. I didn’t. Think. But you wouldn’t. Want to have something half-eaten.”

  “Th-that’s not it at all! I’m totally fine with it, but I just wondered if it bothered you.”

  “I-it. Doesn’t bother me. No, um, not in a bad way. So…here…” Cheeks turning red, Rin proffered the crepe once more, and right before Haruyuki could accept it, Niko’s hand snaked in from the side and grabbed it.

  “If you’re gonna do this little tedious dance, I’ll take it!” Niko announced with a piercing look, and all Haruyuki could do was say, “Go ahead.”

  Niko snorted lightly and then annihilated the strawberry crepe in a mere three bites, gulped down some water, and then shouted as though she had just hit on the idea, “I’ll just say this now. It’s not ’cos I’m the glutton character or anything!”

  “So then which character are you?” Haruyuki sniped, enduring the sadness of having been robbed of the treat.

  It was Pard who answered, rather than Niko. “The jealous character.” Face completely expressionless as always, the look in her eyes softened. “And I’m the thickheaded character.”

  “Wh-what are you talking about, Pa—I mean, Myah?! And just how long are we gonna sit here anyway? Show us something already!” Niko stomped off, and Haruyuki and the others exchanged glances before going after her.

  Having fortified themselves, the four of them decided to first attack the exhibitions of the seventh-grade classes on the third floor of the first school building and climbed the stairs in the middle of the hallway. All three classes were actually quite serious, without a shred of playfulness to their festival offerings, so the group took a quick look around, mentally apologizing, before heading to the second floor.

  In the haunted house of class A, Niko, positioned to Haruyuki’s left, burst out laughing. Meanwhile, Rin, to his right, clung to him with teary eyes. So, unsure of how to react, Haruyuki slipped past the blackout curtain to the outside.

  He couldn’t deny that class B’s cosplay café did tug at him a little, but they’d just eaten those crepes, so they passed by the café and headed for eighth-grade class C. They stopped at the doorway, and Haruyuki struggled with how to broach the fact that this was his own class—and not only that, but he was also part of the team who’d put together this exhibit.

  “This is your class, yeah?” Niko said smoothly.

  “Y-yeah.” He wondered how she knew. “I helped put the exhibit together, but to be honest, it’s no big deal, so don’t expect too much.”

  “Goodness! Is that so?” He had heard the gentle voice before, but it was a fact that this was not one of his party members, so Haruyuki whirled around.

  There, he found three people approaching from behind them. The girl in a sky-blue dress with long hair was unmistakably Sky Raker, aka Fuko Kurasaki. The girl whose hand she was holding tightly—or maybe the girl whom she had captured—wearing the uniform of the elementary division of Matsunogi Academy was Ardor Maiden, aka Utai Shinomiya. And beside the two of them, a girl in red-framed glasses stood quietly, wearing, as always, neutral clothing—this time, skinny jeans with a jersey shirt. That was Aqua Current, who had only just formally returned to the Legion the previous day…Akira Himi.

  Seeing her strict but gentle parent Fuko, Rin clutched Haruyuki’s shirt with her left hand. The Red King, Niko, shook her head in exasperation at another close encounter with a foreign Legion, while Pard appeared to be staring at one of Nega Nebulus’s Four Elements, while still standing tall next to Niko.

  Haruyuki was curious about Pard’s reaction, but their unbalanced group of six bewitching girls and one round boy was drawing stares from the people around them, so he bowed his head first at Fuko, with Rin still hanging from him. “Good morning! Thank you for coming, Master! And welcome to you both as well!”

  “I’d go anywhere for you, of course, Corvus.” Fuko said these disturbing words with a smile and then shifted her gaze slightly. “But I had no idea Rin would be coming. To keep secrets even from me—” Cutting herself off here, Fuko’s smile faded and her brow furrowed. “Rin, you actually look a little pale.”

  “Uh, um. I’m okay! I just. Ate too much with. Breakfast and crepes.” Rin’s face in profile as she answered did actually look a tiny bit too pale to be fine. But she was pale to begin with, and
the extra paleness could have been the hue of the white LED lights they were standing under.

  Perhaps Fuko came to that same conclusion. “Well then, we’ll be in the way if we just stand here in such a large group. So why don’t we first go in and view Corvus’s class exhibit.”

  To start at the end, the guests—first three, then six—all seemed to enjoy grade-eight class C’s “Koenji Thirty Years Ago.”

  At first, just as class rep Ikuzawa had worried, 70 percent of the time they spent inside was devoted not to the star of the show, the photographs, but to viewing the 3-D graphics of the background; however, even in this, there was an unexpected joy. Rin and Pard stood alongside each other and played at naming the type of vehicle every time an old motorcycle went by. If this turned into a stepping-stone to bridging the distance between these two—meeting for the first time, and belonging to different Legions on top of that—then it was worth the work he had put into customizing the exhibit file.

  When the group of six left the classroom after taking their time to fully experience the simple time travel, they all turned to Haruyuki and clapped for a second. Caught off guard, he teared up a little, and Niko mercilessly teased him about that, but he was sure that even this would be a good memory once the festival was over—probably.

  Thinking about this, he stood at the head of the group and tried to move through the hallway down the stairs. At that moment…

  “Oh! Prez! Hey!”

  There was only one student at the school who called Haruyuki by this job title. Turning around, Haruyuki returned the greeting from this student whom he felt like he’d only very recently finally become comfortable talking to: Reina Izeki.

  “H-hey. Oh right, Izeki, you’re doing the class B—”

  He had gotten that far when Reina’s hands clapped together loudly to interrupt him. With her hands pressed together in front of her face, Reina uttered, unexpectedly, “Prez, I’m seriously sorry for skipping out on taking care of Hoo! Starting next week, I’m totes gonna be there with bells on!” Reina bowed low, and her long hair, with 50 percent more ringlets than usual, swung forcefully.