Chapter 2

Chi-chik.

A short electronic tone signaled the powering off of the AmuSphere.

Asuna opened her eyes slowly. She felt the chilly damp of the room's air

before her eyes could focus on the ceiling of the dim room.

She'd set her air conditioner to provide a bit of warmth but forgot to disable

the timer, so it had run its cycle and turned off while she was in the dive. The

room, which was a bit too big for her, was now at thermal equilibrium with the

outside temperature. She heard the sound of rain and turned to the large

window at her right to see countless droplets clinging to the outside of the dark

glass.

Asuna shivered and sat up in bed. She reached for the room environment

controller embedded in the set of drawers at her side and tapped the

"automatic" button on the touch panel. That was all it took for two curtain

motors to quietly buzz to life and shut out the windows, the air conditioner to

come awake, and the LED lights on the ceiling to emit an orangey glow.

Her room was outfitted with the latest interior systems offered by RCT's

home division. They'd installed all of these things while she was hospitalized,

but for some reason, Asuna couldn't bring herself to appreciate them. It was

completely natural to control everything about an inside room with a single

menu in VR, but something about that concept coming to the real world left her

cold. She imagined she could feel on her skin the machine gaze of all the

sensors embedded into the floor and walls.

Or perhaps she felt it was so cold because now she could compare it to the

warmth of Kazuto Kirigaya's traditional home, which she'd visited several times.

Her grandparents' house on her mother's side was like that one. When she

went there during summer vacations, she'd sit facing the back garden, her legs

dangling off the wooden porch in the sunlight, eating her grandma's shaved ice.

Those grandparents had died years ago, and the house had since been torn

down.

She sighed and stuck her feet into her slippers before getting up. The motion

made her head swim, and she tilted over. There was no avoiding the powerful

gravity of the real world.

The virtual world simulated the same level of gravity, of course. But the Asuna

in that world could leap nimbly and allow her soul to wander freely through the

air. The gravity of the real world wasn't just a physical force; it contained the

weight of many different things that dragged her down to earth. She was

tempted to fall back onto the bed, but it was nearly time for dinner. For every

minute she was late, she'd get an extra rebuke from her mother.

She dragged her heavy feet to the closet, where the door folded itself open

without any prompting on her part. She took off her loose polar fleece wear

and threw it rebelliously on the floor. Once she had changed into a spotlessly

white blouse and a long, dark cherry skirt, she sat down on the stool of the

nearby dresser, which automatically deployed a three-sided mirror and a bright

overhead light.

Even around the house, Asuna's mother did not suffer her to dress casually.

She picked up a brush and tidied the long hair that had gone messy during her

dive. As she did, she wondered what sort of scenes were playing out at that

moment at the Kirigaya home over in Kawagoe.

Leafa (Suguha) had said that she and Kazuto were both on dinner duty

tonight. Suguha would drag a sleepy-looking Kazuto downstairs. They'd stand in

the kitchen, Suguha with the knife and Kazuto cooking a fish. Before long, their

mother would return and enjoy an evening beer as she watched television. The

meal would come together as they chatted back and forth, until steaming

dishes and bowls were placed on the table, and the three said their grace.

Asuna let out a trembling breath and tried not to cry. She put down the brush

and stood up. After taking a step into the dim hallway, the lights behind her

went out before she could even close the door.

She descended the semicircular staircase to the first-floor hall, where the

housekeeper, Akiyo Sada, was about to open the front door. She was probably

on her way home after fixing dinner.

Asuna bowed to the woman, a petite figure in her early forties. "Good

evening, Mrs. Sada. Thank you for coming again. Sorry to always keep you so

late."

Akiyo shook her head, her eyes wide in consternation as she bowed deeply.

"N-not at all, Mistress. It is my job."

The last year had taught her that saying, "Call me Asuna" would be pointless.

Instead, she approached the housekeeper and quietly asked, "Are Mother and

Brother home already?"

"Master Kouichirou will be home late. Madam is already in the dining room."

"…I see. Thank you; sorry to keep you."

Once again, Asuna bowed and Akiyo bent over deeply at the waist before

pushing the heavy door open and scurrying out.

She knew the woman had a child in elementary or middle school. Their home

was also in the ward of Setagaya, but she wouldn't get home after shopping

until at least seven thirty. That was a long time for a growing child to wait for

dinner. She'd tried suggesting to her mother that they could have precooked

dinners, but the idea was never entertained.

Asuna spun on her heel, hearing three different locks click on the door behind

her, and crossed the hall to the dining room. The instant she pushed open the

heavy oaken door, a quiet but taut voice said, "You're late."

She glanced at the clock on the wall, which was at exactly six thirty. Before

she could protest this fact, the voice continued. "Come to the table five minutes

before the meal."

"…I'm sorry," Asuna grunted, stepping onto the thick rug with her slippers as

she approached the table. She lowered herself into the high-backed chair, eyes

downcast.

At the center of the three-hundred-square-foot dining room was a long, eightlegged table. Asuna's seat was the second from the northeast corner. To her

left was her brother Kouichirou's chair, and on the short, adjacent east end was

her father Shouzou's, but both were empty now.

In the chair across the table and to the left was her mother, Kyouko Yuuki, a

glass of her favorite sherry in hand, glancing through an original edition of a

book on economics.

She was quite tall for a woman. She was thin, but her solid structure kept her

from looking fragile. Her shiny, dyed-brown hair was parted evenly on both

sides and cropped straight across her shoulder line.

Though her features were attractive, the sharpness of the bridge of her nose,

the line of her jaw, and the fine but deep wrinkles around her mouth gave her

an undeniable air of severity. Then again, perhaps this effect was intended.

Through her sharp tongue and political shrewdness, she had dispatched her

department rivals and achieved tenure as a professor at just forty-nine years of

age last year.

Kyouko shut the hardcover and did not look up as Asuna sat. She spread her

napkin over her lap, picked up her knife and fork, and only then did she glance

at her daughter's face.

For her part, Asuna looked down, mumbled a formality, then picked up her

spoon. For a time, the only sound in the dining room was the faint clinking of

silverware.

The meal was a greens salad with blue cheese, fava bean potage, grilled white

fish with herb sauce, whole-wheat bread, and so on. Kyouko selected each day's

meals for maximum nutrition, but naturally, she cooked none of it.

Asuna continued to eat, wondering when these lonely meals with her mother

had become such tense, unpleasant affairs. Perhaps they had always been this

way. She remembered being scolded sharply for spilling soup or leaving

vegetables behind. It was just that in the past, Asuna had never known what a

fun and pleasant meal was, by comparison.

As she mechanically ate her meal, Asuna's mind wandered far away through

her memory to her virtual home, until Kyouko's voice brought her back. "Were

you using that machine again?"

Asuna glanced at her mother and nodded. "Yes…We made an agreement to

do our homework together."

"It's not going to sink in and do you any good unless you do that studying on

your own."

Clearly, telling Kyouko that she was doing the work on her own in that virtual

environment was not going to convince her. Asuna kept her face down and

tried a different tack. "Everyone lives very far apart. In there, we can meet one

another instantly."

"Using that machine does not count as 'meeting.' Besides, homework is

meant to be done alone. With your friends, you're bound to end up cavorting

around," Kyouko said, her speech picking up steam as she tilted back the sherry.

"And you don't have the leeway for fun and games. You're behind the others,

so it's obvious that you need to study even harder to make up those two extra

years."

"…I am doing my studies. Didn't you see the printout of my second-term

grade report I left on your desk?"

"I did, but I put no stock in the grade reports from a school like that."

"A school like…what?"

"Listen, Asuna. I'm giving you a home tutor in addition to school for your third

term. Not one of these popular online tutors, but a proper one who comes to

the house."

"W-wait…This is so sudden…"

"Look at this," Kyouko commanded, cutting off Asuna and picking up a tablet

computer off the table. Asuna took it from her and looked at the screen,

frowning.

"…What is this…? A summary of a…transfer exam?"

"I called in a favor from a friend who's a high school director to allow you to

take a transfer exam for their senior program. Not a slapped-together school

like your current one, but a real school. It works on credits, so you could fulfill

the graduation requirements in the first semester. That way, you can be in

college starting in September."

Asuna stared at her mother's face in shock. She put down the tablet and

raised her hand to keep Kyouko from continuing. "W-wait. You can't just decide

that on your own. I like my school. The teachers there are nice, and it's a good,

proper school. I don't need to transfer," she squeaked.

Kyouko sighed and made a show of closing her eyes, holding her temples with

her fingers, and leaning back against the chair. This was her finely honed

conversation technique to convince the other person of her superior position.

No doubt any man who witnessed this trick on the sofa of the professor's office

would shrink up. Even her husband, Shouzou, seemed to avoid offering any

antagonistic opinions around the house.

"Your mother looked into this properly," Kyouko lectured. "The place you're

attending now can hardly be called a school. Their curriculum is slapdash and

the subjects are shallow. They scraped together anyone they could get for a

faculty, hardly any of which have experience. It's less of an academic institution

than a correctional facility."

"You…you can't say that…"

"It all sounds very nice when you call it a school that accepts students whose

education has fallen behind due to an accident. But in reality, it's nothing more

than a place where they can gather potential future problem children to keep

an eye on them. Perhaps there's a function for such a place, when some of

those children have spent all that time killing one another in some bizarre

game, but there's no reason for you to be there."

"…"

It was such an avalanche of withering criticism that Asuna could not speak.

The school campus situated in western Tokyo that she'd been attending since

last spring was indeed a hastily built school, constructed just two months after

it was announced. The purpose of it was to educate those players who had

been trapped in the deadly Sword Art Online and lost two years of their

education. Any former SAO player under the age of eighteen could attend

without an entrance test or any tuition, and a graduate automatically earned

the right to sit for a college entrance exam—treatment that was so favorable,

some people even complained about it.

But Asuna knew from her attendance at the school that it was more than just

a safety net. All students were required to undergo individual counseling once a

week, where they were subjected to questions meant to detect antisocial

behavior or thoughts. Depending on the answers, they could be

reinstitutionalized or given drugs to take. So Kyouko's accusation that it was a

"correctional facility" was not entirely untrue.

Even if that was the case, Asuna loved her "school." No matter the

government ministries' intentions, the teachers who worked there were all

volunteers who earnestly sought to connect with the students. There was no

need to hide her past from the other kids, and she got to spend time with the

friends she'd made: Lisbeth, Silica, a number of the frontline warriors—and

Kirito.

She bit her lip, still clutching the fork, and struggled with a sudden urge to

reveal all of her most fervent inner feelings to her mother.

I'm exactly one of those children who spent all that time killing others. I was

living in a world where lives were taken and lost by the sword every day. And I

don't regret those days even the tiniest bit…

But Kyouko did not seem to detect her daughter's inner conflict. "You're not

going to advance into a good college coming out of a school like that. You're

already eighteen, don't you see? And at this rate, I can't begin to imagine when

you'll be in college, if you stick with that place. Every one of your friends from

middle school is about to take the standardized college exam next week. Don't

you feel pressured to catch up?"

"There shouldn't be a serious problem if I'm a year or two late to get into

college. Besides, going to college isn't the only kind of career path to go

down…"

"That's preposterous," Kyouko rebuked sternly. "You have talent. You know

what incredible pains your father and I have gone through to bring out that

talent to the fullest. And then you lost two years to that crazy game…I wouldn't

be saying this to you if you were an ordinary child. But you're not ordinary, are

you? It would be a sin to let the talent you have go untapped. You have the

ability to go to a great college and receive a first-class education—and that's

what you ought to do. You can take your talents to the government or a

business, or you can stay in school and make a living in academia. I'm not going

to interfere with your choice. The one thing I will not allow you to do, however,

is completely abandon those opportunities."

"There's no such thing as hereditary talent," Asuna managed to squeeze in

when Kyouko stopped her speech for a breath. "You have to seize your own life,

don't you? When I was younger, I thought that getting into a good college and

finding a good job was all there was to life. But I changed. I don't have an

answer yet, but I think I'm close to finding out what I really want to do. I want

to attend this school for one more year so I can find it."

"Why would you limit your own options? You could spend years at that place

and never create any kind of opportunity for yourself. But this transfer location

is different. The college it feeds into is excellent, and if your marks are good,

you can even get into my graduate school. Listen to me, Asuna—I just don't

want you to make your life miserable. I want you to have a career that you can

be proud of."

"My career…? Then what was up with that man you forced me to meet at the

house over New Year's? I don't know what sort of story you fed him…but he

seemed to think that we were already engaged. The only one who's limiting my

life options is you, Mother."

Asuna couldn't keep her voice from trembling a bit. She was trying to keep

her gaze as level and powerful as possible, but Kyouko only put the sherry to

her lips, completely unperturbed.

"Marriage is a part of a career. Put yourself into a marriage that limits your

material freedom, and you'll regret it in five or ten years. You won't be able to

do those things you say you want to do. You won't have any trouble with Yuuya

in that regard. And there's much more stability in a family-run regional bank

than a megabank with all the internal competition that it involves. I happen to

like Yuuya. He's a good, honest boy."

"…You haven't learned a thing, have you? Don't forget that the one who

started that terrible crime spree, hurt me and many others, and nearly

destroyed RCT was your personal choice for me: Nobuyuki Sugou."

"Don't even start," Kyouko said, grimacing and waving at the air as though

swatting an invisible fly. "I don't want to hear about him. Besides…it was your

father who was so enamored with that man that he wanted him for a son-inlaw. He's never been a good judge of character. Don't worry about Yuuya; he

might not be as ambitious or forceful, but that just makes him safer and more

stable."

It was true that Shouzou, her father, had a bad habit of ignoring those who

were closest to him. He focused on running the business first and foremost;

even after leaving the CEO position, he was too busy tweaking deals with

foreign capital sources to come home anymore. He admitted that it was a

weakness of his that he'd been too obsessed with Sugou's development skills

and vast ambitions and didn't pay any attention to the toxic human personality

behind the business acumen.

But Asuna felt that one of the reasons for Nobuyuki Sugou's increasingly

aggressive behavior since her middle school years was the incredible pressure

that was placed upon him. And part of that pressure was undoubtedly the

attitude that Kyouko exhibited.

Asuna swallowed a bitter lump in her throat and kept her voice hard. "At any

rate, I have zero intention of getting along with him. I'll choose my own

partner."

"Fine, as long as it's a good man who suits you. And let me be clear: That does

not include any of the students at that facility."

"…"

Something about the way Kyouko said that made it seem oddly specific, and

Asuna felt another chill run through her.

"Did you…look into him…?" she rasped in shock. Kyouko did not confirm or

deny the accusation; instead, she changed the subject.

"You have to understand, your father and I just want you to be happy. From

the moment we picked out your kindergarten, that's been our only concern. I

know that deep down, you regret getting involved on a whim with that game

Kouichirou bought. So you tripped and lost your footing a little bit, but you can

still recover. Only if you truly work for it, though. You can still have the most

brilliant career, if you just put in the effort."

The best career for you, not me, Asuna thought bitterly.

Asuna and Kouichirou were only elements of Kyouko's personal "brilliant

career." Kouichirou went to a first-rate college and was working his way up the

ladder at RCT, to Kyouko's satisfaction. Asuna was meant to follow in his

footsteps, but between the freakish SAO Incident and the damage to RCT's

image caused by Sugou's malfeasance, Kyouko was clearly feeling that her own

career was damaged.

Asuna didn't have the spirit to continue arguing. She put her fork and knife

down next to her half-eaten meal and stood up. "Let me think about the

transfer," she said.

But Kyouko's response was dry and clinical. "You have until next week to

decide. Fill out the necessary fields by then, print out three copies, and leave

them on my desk."

Asuna hung her head and turned for the door. She considered just going back

to her room, but there was something in her chest she needed to expel. A step

out into the hallway, she turned back and coldly called out, "Mother."

"…What?"

"You're ashamed of Grandma and Grandpa, aren't you? You're unhappy that

you were born from a simple farming family, rather than some famous house

with proper heritage."

Kyouko looked stunned for a moment, but the harsh furrows returned to her

brows and lips immediately. "Asuna! Come over here!" she snapped.

Asuna was already closing the heavy teak door. She darted across the hall and

raced up the stairs, yanking open her bedroom door.

The sensors immediately caught sight of her and automatically turned on the

lights and heat. She walked over to the control panel on the wall, unbearably

irritated, and shut down the environment control system. She then threw

herself onto the bed and buried her face in her pillow, not caring if her

expensive blouse got wrinkled.

She didn't mean to cry. As a swordsman, she swore never to cry tears of

sadness or frustration again. But that oath only amplified the agony that

strangled her lungs.

Somewhere inside her head, a voice mocked, You think you're a swordsman?

Just because you weren't half bad at swinging around a little digital sword in a

stupid game? What good is that going to do you in the real world? Asuna

clenched her jaw.

She should have changed after meeting him in that other world. She should

have quit blindly following someone else's values and learned to fight for what

she ought to do.

But from the outside, what was actually different about her now, compared

to before she'd been trapped there? She put on a false smile like a little doll for

the sake of her relatives, and she couldn't firmly refuse the life her parents had

set up for her. If she could be what she believed was her true self only in the

virtual world, then what was the point of coming back to reality at all?

"Kirito…Kirito." The name whispered through her trembling lips.

Kirito—Kazuto Kirigaya—still seemed to possess the hardy will he'd gained

from SAO even now, more than a year after their return to the real world. He

had to be dealing with his own pressures, but he never let it show on his face.

When she had asked him what his future goals were, he smiled shyly and said

that he wanted to be on the side of the developer, rather than the player. And

not for software like VRMMOs, but a new man–machine interface, a much

closer and more intimate connection than the current full-dive technology, with

its many limitations and regulations. Even now, he was active in tech forums

both domestic and foreign, studying and exchanging opinions with others eager

to advance the interface.

Asuna believed that he would continue to head straight for his goal without

hesitation. If possible, she wanted to be with him all the way, following that

same dream. She was hoping to go to school with him for the next year so that

she could determine what she needed to study to make that happen.

But that possibility was now on the rocks, and Asuna was filled with the

helpless feeling that she could not resist the forces compelling her.

"Kirito…"

She wanted to see him. It didn't have to be in the real world; she just wanted

to go back to their little cabin so she could cry into his chest and reveal all of her

troubles.

But she couldn't. The one whom Kirito loved wasn't this powerless Asuna

Yuuki, but Asuna the Flash, mightiest fencer in all the land. That knowledge was

like a heavy chain around her neck.

"You're strong, Asuna. Much stronger than me…"

Kirito's long-past words echoed in her ears. Maybe he would distance himself

from her, as soon as she revealed her weakness to him.

The thought terrified her.

Asuna stayed facedown on the bed until she eventually fell into a light sleep.

She saw herself walking arm-in-arm with Kirito through the shade of the

trees, silver scabbard at her waist. But her other self was locked in a dark place,

forced to watch silently as the pair laughed and chatted away.

In the midst of her bittersweet dream, Asuna pined to return to that world.