Signal Fire at the Water’s Edge Read online

  “O-oh! I-I’m sorry! I have to go right now!” Haruyuki suddenly shouted.

  “Go?” Kuroyukihime lifted her face in surprise. “Go where?”

  “Th-that’s—at the end of the duel, I told Cerberus to come to the entrance of this ped mall. That I’d be waiting for him!”

  “Wh—? No, that’s, but—”

  Haruyuki knew Kuroyukihime was swallowing back the words “It’s too dangerous.” As his parent, and as his Legion Master, it was a natural call to make. The relationship between Wolfram Cerberus and Argon Array was definitely not an ordinary one, and Nega Nebulus suspected that Argon was a senior member of the fearsome organization known as the Acceleration Research Society. Given this, Haruyuki also couldn’t deny how big of a risk it was to expose himself to Cerberus in the real.

  “…I know. But.” He nodded once and then lightly shook his head before continuing. “But he said to me that if there was something more important than winning fights in the Accelerated World, then he wanted to see it. At first, he said the meaning of it all was just to win and earn points, but through duels with me, he feels something. So…So I…”

  As always, Haruyuki exhausted his verbal abilities at the crucial point, but even so, Kuroyukihime seemed to get what he was trying to say. Her slightly widened jet-black eyes finally eased like the sky on a spring night.

  “Is that so? Then we’d best go.”

  “Huh? …Y-you can’t mean you, too?”

  “I’ll be a little ways off. It’ll be fine. We don’t have time to discuss it.”

  That was certainly true. If Cerberus did decide to come to the meeting place, but Haruyuki wasn’t there, then this whole thing would go nowhere. Or it might even have the opposite effect.

  “U-understood. Okay then, I’m sorry, but we have to hurry!” Haruyuki took a deep breath and then started off to the south of the strip at a speed a little less than a trot.

  After moving forward for a few minutes, slipping through housewives shopping for groceries and university students laughing as they strolled along, a large gate with a sign came into view ahead of them. Said to have been standing there since the middle of the previous century—although, of course, it had no doubt been repaired several times—this classical metal gate corresponded to the precise location of the Oume Highway entrance to Look Street.

  At the moment, no boy who fit the bill was there. Although Haruyuki had talked a little with Kuroyukihime after the end of the duel, considering where he had appeared in the Accelerated World, he had to have arrived first. If he just waited there, then probably—no, definitely—Cerberus would come. And then, this time for sure, I’m going to tell him. Together…

  “I’ll say this just in case.” A hand reached out from behind to hold Haruyuki back as he moved to approach the gate.

  Looking back, he saw a somewhat strange expression on Kuroyukihime’s face. “Wh-what?”

  “Keep the possibility in one corner of your mind at any rate. That Cerberus…might not be a boy.”

  “Okay—whaaaat?!”

  “Keep your voice down! …I don’t think that’s the case either, but there is a precedent in your bitter enemy Ash Roller,” Kuroyukihime said, slightly emphasizing the “bitter enemy” part as she removed her hand.

  Ash, in the Accelerated World, was indeed an M-type to end all M-types, a Century End rider who referred to himself as “the great and mighty me.” But in the real world, he was Rin Kusakabe, an extremely reserved, shy girl. As far as Haruyuki knew, she was the lone gender-flipped Burst Linker, but if there was one exception to the rule, then there always existed the possibility that there were two.

  “And when it comes to special characteristics, Cerberus is more than equal to Ash…Understood. I’ll be careful.” Although he nodded his agreement, he began to doubt whether he could actually have a real conversation on first meeting if Cerberus turned out to be a girl. And if Kuroyukihime was watching from nearby on top of that, there was a serious possibility that his whole body would stiffen up, he’d go into super sweat mode, and he’d become unable to say anything other than the letter A.

  Perhaps seeing through to these thoughts in Haruyuki’s heart, Kuroyukihime simply said “Good luck” with a smile and turned toward the mall entrance just ahead of them. She ended up going into a fast-food restaurant to the immediate east of the sign gate, where she was going to observe—or rather, watch over—him from the other side of the glass.

  Now that he was alone, Haruyuki took several deep breaths before firming up his resolve and starting to walk. A few meters, and he arrived directly beneath the gate, so he leaned his back against a metal pillar on the far side from the fast-food place. He glanced at Kuroyukihime sitting at a counter on the other side of the restaurant window and looked around at his surroundings again.

  The time was 6:10 PM. It was a weekday, but there were plenty of people walking by. From his position, Haruyuki could see the sidewalk of Oume Highway running from east to west and the shopping street stretching out to the north, and on both roads, there was no shortage of office workers and students on their way home, as well as shoppers constantly walking around. However, at the moment, no one had stopped and looked his way.

  In the Battle Royale duel, Wolfram Cerberus had appeared a little after Ash Roller, from the northeast. Which meant that in the real world, he (or maybe she) should have appeared from that direction as well. If he was actually going to respond to Haruyuki’s request, that was.

  Glancing at the time display on his virtual desktop, Haruyuki saw that just under five minutes had passed since the end of the duel. If the Burst Linker was going to come, it would be from the north or the east. Hands in loose fists, Haruyuki moved his eyes between the two directions. But passersby and buildings interrupted his gaze, not allowing for a clear line of sight.

  “So you can see this far even in a normal duel stage, hmm?”

  He heard the voice again in his ears, faintly. These were the words uttered by Cerberus after Silver Crow had brought him high in the sky immediately before Argon Array had challenged them. Given how Cerberus specialized in hand-to-hand combat on the ground, he’d probably never viewed the duel stage from that height before.

  One more time. No—more. More. Any number of times, Haruyuki wanted to show him that view again: the snowy white streets of the Moonlight stage continuing on endlessly, illuminated by the enormous full moon. The sea of lights like the ground was overflowing with stardust in the Downtown stage. The green jungle reaching to the distant horizon in the Primeval Forest stage. The eternal twilight dyeing the sky an ephemeral madder red in the Twilight stage.

  “…This world’s infinite.” Haruyuki once more quietly murmured the words he had spoken on the battlefield and turned his face from Oume Highway to the shopping district.

  And then he saw it: the figure of a small person standing perfectly still. One who had appeared in the blink of an eye on the side of the road, about twenty meters away.

  The figure wore a white, open-collared shirt that was probably the uniform of some junior high and gray slacks with a fine checkered pattern. From the clothing, it was a boy, but the hair was longish. The face, more childish than masculine, was maybe that of a seventh grader, a year younger than Haruyuki.

  Haruyuki was a little concerned about the slightly twisted expression on his face, as though he were enduring something painful, but what made the greatest impression was his eyes. Even with the tumult of the narrow, glitzy street wedged between them, Haruyuki keenly felt their gazes lock onto each other. The boy’s eyes conveyed a strong light.

  Normally, Haruyuki would reflexively turn his face away were he to unexpectedly meet the eyes of someone he didn’t know, but just this once, he held the boy’s eyes intently. His gut instinct that this was Wolfram Cerberus was backed up by one other thing: the gray Neurolinker he clutched in his right hand. And, naturally, there was no such device on his slender neck. Haruyuki could see at a glance that he had carried out the order Haru
yuki had whispered as the duel was about to end to cut his connection to the global net.

  I’m here. Walk another twenty meters on those feet. If you do, we’ll say hello first. Say our names, shake hands. And we’ll start once more from there. Haruyuki spoke to him earnestly from his heart. Whatever organization Cerberus belonged to, whatever secrets he had, when it got right down to it, they were both players of the fighting game known as Brain Burst. As long as they shared that foundation, they would definitely be able to understand each other at some point. They could be friends.

  I want to be friends with you, Cerberus!!

  Perhaps picking up on this silent shout, the boy twisted his face further. His eyebrows were pressed tightly together; his pursed lips trembled. His right foot rose slightly, then came back down.

  After a few seconds of inner conflict, the boy gradually relaxed his shoulders, and a faint smile rose upon his face. He snapped to attention, arranging his hands at his sides, and slowly lowered his head. When he raised himself up, he looked back, and then started running north on the shopping street. In the blink of an eye, his small back was mixed in with the crowds of people, and he disappeared from view.

  “Ah…!” A short cry slipped out of Haruyuki, and he reflexively started to chase the boy. But when he had taken two steps forward, he brought himself to a stop.

  He couldn’t rush this. Cerberus had answered Haruyuki’s call and come very close to the meeting place; he’d shown his face in the real world. For a Burst Linker, exposing yourself in the real held a very serious significance. So the next chance they had, he would come even closer than he had today.

  Right. Soon, for sure…

  “I’m sure you’ll meet again soon.” Hearing this voice immediately behind him, Haruyuki turned around and found Kuroyukihime there with a take-out drink cup in one hand. Smiling faintly, she nodded once and held out the cup.

  Instantly, he was conscious of the thirst in his dry throat, and Haruyuki bowed his head with a “Thank you” as he accepted it from her. He put the straw to his mouth and drank half of the cold oolong tea in one gulp. He let out a long breath, and then, gazing at Kuroyukihime’s face, he said, “…You’re right. I’ll go to Nakano again. And then I’ll duel him however many times.”

  “Mmm. Good.” Kuroyukihime assented with a smile and patted him on the back.

  With this action, he finally remembered—immediately before they’d moved to this location, Haruyuki had asked her a question, but he hadn’t yet heard the answer.

  “Um, I’m sorry about before, interrupting our conversation.” After apologizing, he asked again, “Um…Aqua Current, the one who helped me out in the Battle Royale, do you…maybe know her?”

  Kuroyukihime’s face was suspicious at first, but she soon nodded sharply. “Mmm. I do. Current was my old—and my very important—comrade.”

  “She…‘was’…So then you must have a lot more you want to talk about.” Haruyuki had a sudden thought and he quickly continued, “R-right. Current might still be on the matching list for this area. If you requested a duel, couldn’t you see her one more time?”

  “…Mmm…” Kuroyukihime hung her head and took a deep breath, but rather than uttering the Burst Link command to start a duel, this changed into a long sigh. “…No, we’ll have another chance to meet some other time…,” she murmured, and it seemed to him that the faint smile on her face contained several emotions, but Haruyuki could do nothing but nod.

  The pedestrian traffic was interrupted for a moment, and the vehicles on Oume Highway also stopped at a red light. In the silence that was born, Haruyuki gave voice to words containing his own heartfelt emotion. “I guess so. So…some other time.”

  “I’m sorry.” The response he got was not from Kuroyukihime, but from someone who had taken up position behind her at some point. “That ‘some other time’ is now.”

  After passing through two seconds of stiffness, Kuroyukihime whirled around, and Haruyuki sent his gaze flying ahead to the right.

  A person, likely a girl, was standing there. She looked to be the same age as him, or maybe a little older, but she wasn’t wearing a uniform. On her lower half, slim denim capris with sneakers; on her upper half, a three-quarter-sleeve summer knit. The Neurolinker around her neck was a semitransparent white. Her hair was in a bob that curled in slightly at the bottom, and a pair of red-framed glasses accented her defined, clear features. She was completely expressionless, but her somehow transparent eyes alone flickered with light, like the surface of water. Like a small window reflecting her shaken heart.

  “Who—?” The mouth he had opened to ask, “Who exactly are you?” froze where it was.

  He had met this person somewhere before. That afterimage of a memory he’d also sensed during the duel came back to life somewhere deep inside his head; Haruyuki bit his lip with the frustration of not being able to remember despite how badly he wanted to.

  The girl in the glasses looked at him, then at Kuroyukihime, frozen silent next to him, and smiled faintly. After bowing lightly, she turned to Haruyuki and uttered in a voice that was a bit husky, “It’s been a while, Silver Crow.”

  “Oh, um, hi—” Reflexively, he started to lower his head and then froze once more. C-c-c-c-c-cracked in the real?! He lurched back, but the girl stopped him with her right hand and took a small rectangular object out of the shoulder bag slung across her body.

  When he looked, he saw it was a thin tablet terminal that seemed a bit out of date. Her fingers danced across the touch panel, and then she turned it around and showed it to him. Displayed on the eighteen-centimeter screen was a photo. It depicted a person from the chest up. Chubby face, messy hair, round eyes open wide, staring blankly, this idiotic face of a boy—no matter how he looked at it, it was Haruyuki’s own. And not just that. The text SILVER CROW was quite clear in the bottom of the photo, and it was even dated: 11/09/2046.

  “Wh…Wh-wha…?” Wh-wh-wh-why do you have this picture?! Haruyuki was faltering once more.

  “…Which is to say,” the girl said, “no need to worry about being cracked in the real at this stage.”

  Even with all this new information, he couldn’t simply accept it with an “Oh, all right.” Still stiff as a board, Haruyuki continued to glare at himself on the screen.

  Here Kuroyukihime finally spoke, albeit softly. “…Curren…?”

  And then, putting the tablet terminal back into her bag, the girl pushed her red glasses up at the bridge with a finger and turned to face Kuroyukihime for the first time. She blinked twice or so before narrowing her eyes as though dazzled and then nodding lightly but assuredly. “A pleasure to meet you in the real. And…it’s been a while, Lotus. The last time I spoke to you was…two and a half years ago.”

  This response had two meanings. First, that this girl in glasses was Aqua Current, the level one with the flowing-water armor who had helped Haruyuki in the Battle Royale earlier. And second, that she did indeed have a deep bond with Kuroyukihime—or rather, the Black King, Black Lotus.

  But that wasn’t all. Current had some kind of connection with Haruyuki, too. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have a photo of him in the real—and from six months ago, at that—and there’d be no explanation for why she saved him from Argon Array’s attack. But why couldn’t he remember the details of the “some kind”?

  Slammed with maximal frustration, Haruyuki unconsciously hit his own head with his right hand. He went to bop himself one more time, but Current quickly reached out to stay his hand.

  “I’m sorry. It’s my fault you can’t remember.”

  “…Huh…? What do you mean…?”

  Current turned toward a dumbfounded Haruyuki and abruptly said, “I’ll explain everything once I recover your memory. But for that, we’ll need a safe place where we can relax. Any ideas?”

  He shelved his questions for the time being and exchanged a glance with Kuroyukihime before nodding sharply.

  “Um…If you don’t mind walking a little.”

>   3

  The Nega Nebulus strategy meeting room and frontline base—in other words, the Arita living room, situated on the twenty-third floor of wing B of a mixed-use, high-rise condo north of Koenji Station. By the time Haruyuki, Kuroyukihime, and the girl in glasses who was apparently Aqua Current arrived there, the time was six forty-five PM.

  For Haruyuki, who boasted a high-fuel-consumption physique that ran counter to the times, now his hunger meter was approaching the red zone. However, until at least half of the mountain of questions and mysteries that had piled up were resolved, even if he ate dinner, he wouldn’t be able to taste it.

  Thus, after showing the girls to the sofa set, Haruyuki poured three glasses of cold tea in the kitchen and piled some roasted-plum mochi rice cakes, wrapped in seaweed, on a wooden plate for a meager source of provisional sustenance. But on his way back to the sofa with the tray, he stopped short.

  For some reason, the sight of Kuroyukihime and Aqua Current sitting across from each other lanced his heart. The two of them were staring at each other silently; it was as though they each deeply wanted the other to interact, while at the same time they were trying to distance themselves. This mood very strongly reminded him of Kuroyukihime and Fuko Kurasaki/Sky Raker in the period right after they were reunited.

  “…Sorry to keep you waiting,” Haruyuki said, and he set the tray down on the glass table before placing a mug of cold green tea in front of each girl. The room was a little dim, so he went to turn the lights higher, only to change his mind and open the south curtains all the way instead. The light of the evening sun pushing through the rain clouds departing to the east, dyed a golden color, filled the window, making him recall the last scene of the Ice stage battle, whether he wanted to or not.

  “…The rainy season will be over soon, hmm?” Kuroyukihime asked.

  Haruyuki nodded. “The latest weather report said July fifth.”

  “One more week, then? There are a few things I’d like to take care of before that…Thanks for the tea.” Kuroyukihime took her glass in hand, and the girl opposite her also thanked him before putting her glass to her lips.