by Blitz Kiva
Edogawa walked a little ways to a DyDo Drinco vending machine and put a few coins into it. Of course, there were drink vending machines inside the office building, but Edogawa had always been partial to the DyDo brand. He’d been especially fond of their Yubari Melon Milk lately, although it came in very small cans.
He inserted 130 yen, then pressed the button. The steel can descended with a clang. The cool feel of it soothed his frayed nerves. Just as he was pulling the tab, the vending machine spoke to him: “Lucky you! You win the jackpot! Have another!”
Wow, he thought. Did people actually hit the vending machine lottery from time to time? He decided to choose another, wondering why it’d had to happen on today of all days. He picked a Sarashibo Orange, which he hadn’t had in a while, but had been a reliable friend back in his high school arcade-trawler days.
He reflected on all the things he’d been experiencing for the first time lately, despite living what he’d thought had been a fairly long life. He chugged his melon milk, then headed back to the Thistle company building, pressing the long 500 ml “Freshly-Squeezed Orange Juice” can against his forehead. He couldn’t tell if he was lucky or unlucky to have hit the vending machine jackpot in these decidedly unlucky circumstances. If it was a word of encouragement from God for him to keep up the good work, it was an awfully bittersweet one. But what Edogawa was most angry at was himself, for feeling slightly happy about this irritating, bittersweet experience.
After returning home, Sakurako ran through her housework. She cleaned up the dishes, tidied up the kitchen, and checked the expiration dates on the products in the refrigerator and on the shelves. Usually she would only use the shower attached to her room, but when Ichiro was out of the house, she secretly used his bathroom. Ichiro had given her permission to use it, so she didn’t actually have to do it secretly. But to maintain a measure of shame and delineation between master and servant, she always insisted, “I would never use my master’s bathroom.” Of course, this was all lip service.
The walls of the Tsuwabuki master bathroom were lined with Japanese cypress. Sakurako found it extremely annoying to clean, but she did appreciate the luxury hotel atmosphere it provided her whenever she entered. It was an indulgent space, with multiple bathtubs, including a cold water bath and a Jacuzzi. It had large, liberating windows, owing to the fact that it was the tallest building in the area, and you could even go outside—which she found quite unsettling, personally. And naturally, there was a sauna, as well.
Sakurako Ogi. Despite her classy name and profession, she had been born middle class.
As she gazed at the water droplets clinging to the window glass, she was reminded anew of just how wealthy Ichiro was. She had always known it, rationally, and having seen his freewheeling spending and the way he decorated his house, it was perhaps true that she should need no further reminders of it.
Still, experiencing his way of life for herself made it feel completely different. When she stepped into the bath, she was overwhelmed by the feeling that she didn’t belong here at all... She’d thought that she was used to using the credit cards Ichiro gave her (for house expenses) when shopping, but the palladium card he’d given her at the airport had shaken her. He’d told her to use it as she saw fit, and so he probably wouldn’t get mad at her, no matter how she used it.
Still, the palladium card... She’d heard it had no spending limit.
Sakurako couldn’t even imagine how she’d ever reach the spending limit even on the black cards Ichiro had given her, but when he’d handed her that card of silver, it was as if he was telling her:
“Hold nothing back, and show no mercy.”
He had been telling her to stop his avatar’s rampage.
I’m afraid that’s not possible, Ichiro-sama, she thought. What am I supposed to do? I don’t know how to spend large quantities of money. As a servant, I want to live up to your faith in me, but you’ve never given me such an ambiguous order before...
She decided, at least, to get out of the bath. She couldn’t bring herself to use the sauna now. She wiped herself off, put on her underwear, and changed into her pajamas. She dried her hair with the hair dryer, but skipped a reapplication of makeup—with her master gone, there was no need for that, at least.
What should she do now, she wondered. After checking for incoming calls on her cell phone, she found a message from Iris, whom she’d friended in the game. Apparently Matsunaga wanted to invite her to a conference they were having a bit after 9:00 P.M.
Sakurako had no other plans, so she decided to log in for now. In the end, it was the same thing she’d usually be doing.
She moved into the game room, activated the Cocoon, and sat down in the seat. In one hand, she held the palladium card. It felt a bit ridiculous to even bring it into the game with her, but she fed it into the slot, which devoured it willingly.
The head-mounted gear descended. Electric and quantum signals cut Sakurako’s consciousness off from the real world.
How many times had she gone into the drive now?
It was one year ago that Sakurako had bought a Miraive Gear X and the Standard Pack version of Narrow Fantasy Online. It hadn’t been as rare as the Premium Pack, but there still hadn’t been a lot of units in the first printing. She’d had to line up at an Akihabara game shop all night, and she had even been interviewed by a variety show. The fact that she’d managed to get ahold of a copy had been no more than a combination of coincidence and good fortune.
Since then, she’d played almost every day. Compared to other players who had started at the same time, Kirschwasser’s development had been slow. But Sakurako had, through regular grinding and hard work, managed to maintain her position at the high end of the mid-level players.
Sakurako’s consciousness was now inside the virtual reality. She felt a definite change in her height and her viewpoint, as well as the mass of her body... but perhaps it was natural that changing one’s sex and body type completely would feel a bit odd.
In this world, she was the brawny silver-haired Knight, Sir Kirschwasser. There were players like Iris and Kirihito (Leader) who never questioned that identity, as well as those like King and Matsunaga who immediately saw through it. It was fun to be able to change who you were.
There had been a time in Sakurako’s life when she’d been devoted to cosplay. It was part of why she loved her job as a live-in maid, but getting to play a radically different person in Kirschwasser was something she could only do in this fictional reality. She put effort into her roleplay, too.
When Kirschwasser awoke, he was on Glasgobara’s main street. He immediately called his horse, Oukaou, and headed for Martial City Delve.
“Kirschwasser.”
He heard a voice addressing him. He turned back to see a muscular Anthromorph standing there.
“My, if it isn’t Sir Taker,” Kirschwasser said. “How unusual to see you.”
Kirschwasser had once fought Taker to protect Iris Brand, but now that was all behind him, and they were just fellow players. There was no enmity whatsoever in his voice.
Taker let out a chuckle, and said, with the shifty eyes of a dead man walking, “You should call me Trash right now.”
Kirschwasser wondered what had happened.
Actually, he had heard from Nem and Amesho that the man was a rather sensitive type. Any little thing that went wrong would set him to sulking, and he’d ask people to start calling him Trash. Rather the high-maintenance type, Kirschwasser thought.
After a moment, he noticed that “Trash” wasn’t wearing his usual tattered robe. He must have lost it after losing the battle to Duplichiro, which would also explain his total lack of energy.
“I heard what’s going down,” Trash said sourly. “Sounds like it’ll be pretty tough.”
“I’m afraid I’m not the only one it will be hard on,” Kirschwasser said.
Duplichiro’s violence had plunged the game into chaos. Kirschwasser couldn’t allow it to continue. If they waited on
the devs, the devs would probably clear it up eventually, but Ichiro had entrusted him with the duty to keep him contained until then.
“What will you do now, Sir Trash?” Kirschwasser asked.
“Heading for Delve, I guess. Nothing else to do, anyway.”
“In the middle of a weekday?”
“My work situation is a little unique...”
He was self-employed, perhaps. From the way he spoke, he sounded like he’d had a hard life. Kirschwasser wondered if he was a mercenary in real life, too.
“The witch told me a bunch of players have gotten together already,” said Trash.
“For the planning conference?” Kirschwasser asked.
“Matsunaga set it all up. He’s really good at making events out of these things.”
That was true. Matsunaga had a hand in everything that went on in the game, from the Grand Quest where Ichiro and King had fought, to the series of incidents that had led to the grudge match between Nem and Iris. He didn’t do it out of a desire to ruin anyone or make them unhappy. He just wanted to make the stories more exciting. Of course, it also let him write interesting articles for his blog, get more hits, and collect more money from his affiliates, but that probably wasn’t the only reason.
Deep down, Matsunaga just liked being the one to arrange exciting events. He was a born producer.
It brought Sakurako back to the days when she’d toured arcade events around the country with her two older brothers. In an arcade in one region, she’d met a female gamer who had said similar things. She’d been a born producer, as well.
“Of course, I’m sure the devs find it quite annoying,” Kirschwasser said.
“I think it’s fine,” said Trash. “We’re enjoying ourselves again.”
Kirschwasser nodded. Yes, thanks to Matsunaga, a lot of players were enjoying the game again. Given that an unknown hacker had taken control of the devs’ system, it was probably a relief to them.
“Who do you think Master Duplichiro really is?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” Trash folded his arms and shook his head. “I’ve met some pretty shifty types in my time. He was similar to them in some ways.”
“What do you mean?”
“Like, the way he stole power that’s not his and now he seems so self-satisfied with it. I’ve met guys I can sympathize with on that level and guys that I can’t, but there’s something weirdly childlike about this guy.”
Kirschwasser was surprised to hear the world “childlike” appear in his analysis. It was true that cheating, acquiring overwhelming power, and then using it to beat down on others was something that children might do. But that couldn’t possibly mean he was a literal child. Duplichiro’s actions were taking place on a scale that that alone wouldn’t explain.
Kirschwasser expressed his doubts, and Trash nodded once again. “Yeah, what’s weird if we assume he’s a child is that there also wasn’t much ‘play’ in what he did. He was direct and efficient, but he also didn’t seem very accustomed to the game.”
“It’s a difficult puzzle, isn’t it?” Kirschwasser asked.
“Yeah,” Trash sighed again, suggesting he really didn’t have any idea at all.
Air travel was boring. Even in first class, which did everything it could to see to the comfort of their customers, that remained true. Ichiro simply didn’t like the idea of passively sitting in a seat, waiting until they reached their destination. They hadn’t even taken off yet, but when he thought about the ten-or-more-hour flight that awaited them, Ichiro couldn’t help but feel a bit bored.
On the other side of the spectrum, the two children he had brought along were shouting in excitement.
“This is my first time in first class!” Sera cried.
“I’ve only been once before!” Asuha boasted in response.
Ichiro had given her a trip to Dubai as a present for her tenth birthday. On that flight, first-class seats had effectively been their own little cabins, and she’d passed the evening in luxury, not having to care about anyone else around her. But that was a service offered by only a few companies like Emirates Airlines.
“Mr. Tsuwabuki, we have wine and champagne,” a flight attendant offered.
“Mm, no thank you,” Ichiro bluntly said, then sat down. “Asuha, King, what about you? Do you have any soft drinks?”
“Certainly. Apple juice, ginger ale, black tea, cold milk...”
Ichiro cast a glance at the seat next to him. Sera was completely absorbed in a portable game system.
The gamer only noticed the question after a minute, looked up, and answered, “No thanks.”
“Oh, um, I’ll have ginger ale,” Asuha said.
“Yes, ma’am.” The attendant bowed to Asuha, who was sitting in the row in front of them.
There would still be a bit of time before they took off. Sera, eyes still focused on the game system, addressed Ichiro. “Old man.”
“Hm?”
“Tell me more about what’s going on.”
“Ah.”
With hands deftly manipulating the controls of a complex 3D action game, Sera’s attention was somehow still fully focused on Ichiro. Asuha, from the row in front, was also focused on him.
Ichiro put a hand to his chin thoughtfully. He took a moment to think about where to start, but eventually decided to just tell them everything.
He started with the inciting incident, then described his trip to Thistle to confirm. He didn’t mention that the security company employee he’d run into was Ed, but he did talk about the possibility of information being leaked from inside the company. He talked about the strange transmission of data that had taken place when he’d overwhelmed the databus during his fight with King, and about the signs that Ichiro’s account itself had been accessed from America.
“Why Pittsburgh, though?” Sera asked.
“I just happened to notice that the IP address was that of a lab where a friend of mine works,” Ichiro answered simply. “He runs a robotics engineering lab in Pittsburgh. He’s an interesting person. Currently hard at work developing a robot maid.”
“Can people tell that stuff just from seeing the IP address?”
“Some people can, such as myself.”
A few years ago, the spread of quantum communications technologies had caused the world’s IP address format to upgrade from the original IPv4 to IPv6. It had caused quite a bit of confusion, but it had solved the IP address insufficiency problems that had existed for a while leading up to it.
“Um, so, is this interesting friend of yours the one behind it, Itchy?” Asuha asked.
“It would speed things up if it were, but I don’t believe so.”
“But they’re accessing the server from his lab, right?”
“Yes, that is true...” But Ichiro had his eye on a different suspect. “She” was currently accessing it from Pittsburgh, and the researchers there probably hadn’t even realized she was there.
He didn’t know why that laboratory had been chosen. She’d probably known that accessing the server from overseas would slow them down, and that she would need enormous server machines and supercomputers to do what she wanted to do. She had probably had a list of candidates, and then just chosen that robot engineering company from it by coincidence.
“There are quite a few anime movies that Sakurako-san sees every summer,” Ichiro said.
“Yeah?”
“It’s like that.”
“I see.” Sera nodded, as if in perfect understanding.
“Huh? What? What do you mean?” Asuha seemed confused.
“Asuha, we’re about to take off,” Sera said. “You should fasten your seatbelt.”
“Um, right...” Grumpily, Asuha slid back into her seat and did as she was told.
“There will be a difference in time zones, so you should probably get some sleep now, while you can. Though I’m sure it will be difficult to sleep.” As he spoke, Ichiro reclined his chair all the way. The generous space allowed in first class
allowed him to recline to a full 180 degrees.
“I’m not really sleepy, though...” Asuha muttered from the row ahead.
After playing for a while on the portable device, Sera finally closed it, then reclined as well.
Despite his claims that it would be hard, Ichiro began making the noises of sleep just a few minutes later, around the same time the flight attendant was announcing their takeoff. Was this a part of his genius, or simple impudence? Even as the plane jostled down the runway for takeoff, he showed no signs of awakening, so maybe it was the latter.
Inside the Red Sunset Knights’ guild house, Tiramisu met them with a smile.
“Welcome, Sir Kirschwasser. Mr. Taker.”
The customization of guild houses in Narrow Fantasy Online, both inside and out, was quite flexible. Players could buy furniture items from NPCs, and while most of them were just window dressing with no real function behind them, the ones that suggested an impossibly luxurious lifestyle were still very popular. This held true in the Knights’ guild house, as well: Red carpet lined the hallways, with paintings hanging on the walls and chandeliers dangling from the ceilings.
As someone who was always logging on to the game from an actual rich person’s house, Sakurako-as-Kirschwasser smelled a whiff of nouveau riche about it. But Sakurako herself had been born into the middle class, so it didn’t bother her all that much. She didn’t know anything about how most rich people lived their lives, anyway, and she knew that using Ichiro Tsuwabuki as any kind of standard for “normal” could get her into trouble.
“Lady Tiramisu, how have you been?” Kirschwasser asked in concern. He’d heard about what had happened from Iris.
“Ah, no need to worry,” she said. “It was a bit frightening, but I’m not the sort of person to dwell on such things once they’ve passed.”
Tiramisu had been beaten down by Duplichiro just a few hours earlier. Either due to a bug or intentionally, the “Nullify Sensation” function wouldn’t activate during fights in Delve, which meant one-sided violence like that could be slightly traumatic even to top-level players. But at least she seemed to be all right.
