022-04: Sisters’ Prayer: Serene Garden May 2024
The memories of the very first day connecting to the original Medicuboid test
prototype were still vivid.
Test Unit One was a rather artless combination of large headgear and a
prebought gel bed. Dozens of colorful cables spilled down onto the floor, with
gobs of monitors and tools arranged all around. There wasn't an official code
name yet, just MFT1, for Medical Full-Dive Tester One.
She was a little afraid the first time she lay down on the bed, in part because
the SAO Incident had started just three months ago and was still unsolved. But
her big sister, Aiko, was there to hold her hand, and Dr. Kurahashi promised her
it was absolutely safe and wouldn't hurt. So she withstood her nerves and
waited for the moment to arrive.
An electronic contraption like a huge helmet came down from above and fit
over her head, plus her entire face. She closed her eyes and gripped her sister's
hand.
"You'll be fine, Yuu," said a faint voice, and the hand squeezed back. There
was a strange whistling, rushing sound, and the feeling of her sister's hand and
the pressure of the gel bed faded away. Eventually, there was a colorful ring of
light before her eyes, despite the fact that they were closed. And then Yuuki
Konno was in a VR world with a new body.
It was a year and three months after she'd developed multidrug resistant
AIDS. She was twelve years and nine months old.
1
"Ah…!" cried Ran.
The sound roused Yuuki from the hillslope where she'd been napping.
"What's wrong, Sis?"
"Oh…I didn't mean to wake you, Yuu. I just saw a news article that surprised
me…"
Her sister was holding a thin, partially translucent board that looked like
carved crystal fitted into a silver frame. That was an information screen used for
browsing the external Net while you were inside Serene Garden, the VR hospice
program.
"What's the article?" Yuuki asked, leaning forward. Ran hesitated, then
offered her the crystal.
The moment she read the article at the top of the daily news for May 11th,
2024, Yuuki yelped with surprise. In a large font, it said, Police department
looking into forced rescue of SAO Incident victims.
Already a year and a half had passed since the start of the Incident, an
unprecedented situation in which ten thousand people were trapped inside a
virtual world. Initially, the government led a plan to free the victims through
software means, but they found no way through the comprehensive trap set up
by the incident's perpetrator. It had seemed there was nothing they could do
but helplessly watch.
"Forced rescue…how?" Yuuki murmured, reading the article. She couldn't go
to middle school, but she was able to continue her studies in the virtual world,
and she always liked reading, so news articles like this weren't out of her ability
to understand.
"Hmm…the police are investigating the possibility of externally destroying the
NerveGear that the seven thousand surviving victims are wearing…?"
At that point, she paused and let out a wordless exclamation. Yuuki looked up
from the tablet to her sister and asked, "But the perpetrators made it so that if
you try to destroy the NerveGear, it electrocutes the brain, right?"
"Not electricity—electromagnetic waves," Ran corrected in a teacherly tone.
Still, her face was grave. "Based on this article, they're hoping that instantly
destroying the battery might prevent the device from creating a pulse strong
enough to damage the wearer's brain…but…"
"Hmm…"
Yuuki gazed at the photo of the NerveGear attached to the article. The bulky
headgear that Medicuboid Test Unit One used was modeled after the
NerveGear, so the resemblance was rather close.
She was currently using—no, inside—Test Unit Two, which was very different
in size and shape, but the thought of physically destroying VR headgear that
someone was wearing gave her the chills.
"…How do they instantly destroy it, physically speaking? They can't just blow
it up or smash it with a hammer, I assume," she said.
"Good point…Maybe they're using a precision drill to open a hole in the
exterior shell, then hoping to snip the positive electrode line? But knowing how
thorough the culprit was, I bet there are secret backup circuits that would still
work."
"Uh-huh…"
"Plus, I seem to recall that in the culprit's message, there was something
about how if we tried to destroy the NerveGear to save a player, it might
compromise the safety of the others. Meaning the plan to free them all would
have to be done absolutely simultaneously with seven thousand different
NerveGear units. I'm not sure that's possible."
"It sounds…difficult," murmured Yuuki, although the truth was that she didn't
understand what her sister was saying anymore.
Usually, she'd stop trying to process what Aiko was saying and think, She's so
smart. This time, however, Yuuki looked back at the crystal tablet. She'd heard
that some of the SAO Incident victims were being kept in their hospital, under
the same roof, so she couldn't help but be curious.
"…Ran, why do you think this Kayaba guy did this?" Yuuki asked.
Aiko's avatar, Ran, just looked ahead without answering. Yuuki looked up,
too, out toward the ridge of the horizon, faded and blue with distance.
The two girls were sitting in a place on the eastern side of the spacious Serene
Garden called Teal Hills. The hills themselves were gentle and covered with
greenery. Blue lakes and delicate little villages were nestled between them. It
was so beautiful, she could sit here and watch forever.
Beginning in September of 2023, Serene Garden was a VR hospice, a virtual
world meant to provide palliative care to terminally ill patients. The majority of
the system resources went into creating a beautiful and pleasant world. When
the AmuSphere was released in June of that year, all its games revolved around
adventures or shooting things, but Serene Garden replaced the concept of
combat with carefully and intricately designed landscapes with striking views.
The eastern part of its large map was full of green hills; the north, snowy fields;
the west, tall mountains; and the south, deep woods. Sitting in the center of the
map was a capital city designed to look like a European-style town. If you
wanted to walk to see every part of the world, it would take you an entire
week.
Yuuki and Ran's parents died at the end of last year, one after the other. The
direct cause of death in both cases was pneumonia, but they'd suffered from a
number of opportunistic infections and had to be given powerful pain
suppressants to ease their suffering. By the end of the fall, they were asleep
around the clock.
There was one single time in which their parents used AmuSpheres to visit
"the garden."
The pain-canceling function of the AmuSphere wasn't powerful enough to
eliminate their suffering entirely, so they could be together for only about an
hour. But that hour took them on a stroll from the center of town to the grassy
fields outside, a precious memory that would forever remain in Yuuki's and
Ran's hearts. Their father ate the lunch they prepared and marveled over how
delicious it was. Their mother's eyes brimmed with tears at the sight of the
beautiful landscape, and she sang the children's songs and hymns the sisters
loved so much.
If not for full-dive technology and virtual reality, this experience could never
have happened.
And this technology was almost entirely created by Akihiko Kayaba, the man
behind the horrible SAO Incident.
The precious memory with their parents wasn't the only thing he enabled.
Yuuki was using a Medicuboid developed by a medical company, but Ran had to
use a modified version of the NerveGear, one with a smaller battery and other
safety limitations. So it was thanks to the worst criminal of the century that the
two sisters were able to interact in the virtual world.
Ran rubbed Yuuki's back, sensing there were some conflicted feelings to be
smoothed out.
"I don't know, either. But you don't need to worry about that, Yuu. You're
testing the Medicuboid so that it works right and helps as many patients as
possible in the future."
"...Yeah…"
Yuuki leaned against her big sister's shoulder.
Ran (Aiko) was Yuuki's "big" sister, but the truth was that they were twins.
However, for as long as Yuuki could remember, she'd always looked up to her
sister and relied on her for help. Ran had always doted on her and protected
her.
The reason Yuuki was the test subject for the Medicuboid was because of her
sister's strong insistence. The Medicuboid, a very delicate and complex piece of
machinery, was installed in a biological clean room at Yokohama Kohoku
General Hospital, where the girls were hospitalized. The interior of the room
had far fewer germs and viruses than outside, meaning it minimized the risk of
opportunistic infections—the greatest danger to a person with AIDS.
Being a tester meant going into the clean room, extending your time to live.
Ran knew this and withdrew from candidacy to let Yuuki take it. A year and
three months had passed since then, with Ran staying in an ordinary long-term
hospital room. Her condition had deteriorated slightly more than Yuuki's in that
time. Even now, Ran was living with the fear of disease that the NerveGear
couldn't prevent.
When Dr. Kurahashi proposed going into the clean room to be a Medicuboid
test subject, Yuuki could have said, "I'm fine. You go in, Sis," but she didn't. Ran
said that instead, and she said it without a moment's hesitation: "You take it,
Yuu."
Yuuki bit her lip and squeezed hard with her teeth. Suddenly, Ran shot to her
feet.
The wind blew her long hair as she stretched her limbs. Their avatars were
automatically generated by the game based on photographs, but even still,
Ran's avatar was surprisingly accurate to her real self. The girlie shirtdress she
was wearing looked great on her.
She grabbed Yuuki's hand with a smile and exclaimed, "C'mon, Yuu, let's pick
some herbs. I have a feeling we're going to find that ultrarare one today."
"...Okay!"
Yuuki squeezed her sister's hand back.
2
There might be no combat in Serene Garden, but that didn't mean sightseeing
was the only activity to do.
The biggest gameplay aspect was housing. Users were given a specific area of
land in Serenity, the city at the center of the world, where they could build and
design their own homes. The exterior was limited to the varieties of colored
bricks seen elsewhere around the city, so most of the customization was
interior decoration.
You could purchase or order the materials and furniture for interior
decoration from the NPC shops around the town, which required points called
currens (which was apparently short for currency). But currens couldn't be
shared between people; the only way to earn more was by collecting. That
meant going around the world map to locations where harvestable plants,
minable ores, and catchable bugs and such would appear, then taking them to a
shop in town where you could exchange them for currens based on their rarity
level. You could also use those items to craft other items directly, or raise the
bugs to participate in the Insect Battle Tournament. There was a surprising
amount to do.
In Serenity, Yuuki and Ran shared a house that they'd been customizing for
the last six months, but they were far from finished. At the moment, they were
saving up points to put a large standing hearth in their living room. They were
about 70 percent of the way there.
The good thing was that collecting was fun on its own, not a pain. An hour or
two would simply vanish while they walked through the picturesque meadows
looking for special herbs. Every single person using Serene Garden was already
battling the pressure of wondering how much time they had left to live, so the
relaxing effect of the collecting process and how it helped the time pass made it
very popular. There was an old woman Yuuki was friends with who was so
dedicated to scouring the entire world map and acquiring items that she had
built herself a four-story mansion that loomed over part of Serenity.
The twins weren't going that far, but if they were going to build a hearth
where they could roast potatoes, they couldn't take a day off. From the hillside
where they were resting in the sun, they went to their favorite secret collecting
spot: the banks of a little pond nearby. Yuuki eagerly peered around the area
for herbs, basket in hand.
"…Ah," her sister said.
"What is it?" she asked. Ran was a bit farther away and motioned for her to
be quiet. Her older sister was frozen in a half crouch. Yuuki tried to follow the
angle of her eyesight but couldn't tell what Ran had spotted to cause this
reaction.
She set the basket down and snuck as quietly as possible to Ran's side, then
squinted, searching the grassy thicket…
"…Ah," Yuuki said, too, when she saw it.
On the trunk of an aged, leafy tree standing at the side of the pond was a stag
beetle colored a deep, vivid blue. It seemed to be nearly four inches long, with
two massive mandibles and an extremely long horn jutting from its thorax.
Yuuki had seen its picture in a book of all the insects in the game.
"Doesn't that beetle look valuable to you?" her sister asked.
"It's more than valuable. That's a royal triton stag beetle," Yuuki replied
immediately.
Despite the nerves and excitement, there was a clear note of annoyance in
her sister's reply. "I can't believe you even know its name."
"If you raise it right, it can be the strongest of all the stag beetles!"
"…I didn't know you were interested in bug battles, Yuu."
"A-actually, I kinda like it. A lot," she whispered back.
In the meantime, the blue beetle was slowly climbing the trunk of the ancient
tree. There was a stream of golden sap ahead of it, and that seemed to be the
beetle's destination.
"Did you bring a net, Sis?"
"I was only expecting to pick herbs today, so I just brought the basket."
"Same here…"
The storage space for users of the garden was quite limited. If you were out
collecting for hours at a time, there was no room for anything you didn't
absolutely need to bring. Yuuki and Ran were plant experts, and the only times
they caught insects were when they found one that was worth a lot.
But this one sitting less than twenty feet away was the royal triton, the rarest
of them all. If they cashed it in at the insect shop, they'd be able to buy their
hearth with change to spare. They had to catch this bug.
"I'll just grab it with my hands," Yuuki whispered. Ran looked shocked and
sucked in a sharp breath.
"Yuu…you're going to touch it with your bare hands?"
"..."
That's right. She's like Mom—she hated bugs in real life. If I caught a
grasshopper in the yard and brought it inside, they'd both scream and run
around, she recalled fondly.
"The bugs here are totally fine. They don't bite you or sting or shoot gross
liquid. Just wait here," Yuuki said, patting Ran on the shoulder. She took off her
sandals and crouched low before proceeding forward.
She'd never told her sister, but she was secretly engaging in a fair amount of
bug hunting on her own time. There were three ironclad rules of catching rare
bugs. One, don't move too fast. Two, don't approach from the front. Three,
don't make any unnatural sounds.
She was moving through knee-high grass, so there was some unavoidable
rustling. The trick was not to move too fast, so the sound would get lost in the
blowing of the breeze.
The rare stag beetle reached the place where the golden sap was seeping
from the trunk and came to a stop. Feeding time was the best opportunity to
catch an insect, but from personal experience, Yuuki knew that the rarer the
bug, the shorter the window was. In about fifteen seconds, it would spread its
wings and buzz off into the air.
Less than ten feet to the tree. If she kept waiting for the breeze to blow
before moving, she'd never get there in time. But if she charged now and made
a lot of noise, the beetle would easily escape.
What should I do? How can I move without touching the grass…?
Yuuki briefly glanced to her sides and caught sight of something. Along the
water in the pond, just to her right, was a sequence of wooden posts spaced
about three feet apart. They were taller than the grass, and if she hopped from
post to post, she wouldn't make any noise.
The problem was that the posts were only about two inches across. If her
balance was anything less than perfect, she'd topple into the grass to the left or
the pond to the right. And she didn't have time to carefully judge each step.
…Just gotta do it! she told herself and moved sideways with the next breeze.
She waited for the right timing, stood up, and leaped onto the narrow stake.
Here goes!
Silently, she hopped from post to post. By the time she got to the last one,
somehow managing not to fall off, the stag beetle had finished its meal and
spread its jewellike elytra, revealing the clear hind wings that would enable it to
fly away.
Bzzz! It took flight, wings buzzing.
"Yaaah!" Yuuki shouted, no longer bothering to remain silent, and leaped for
all she was worth. The tips of her fingers caught the long horn of the beetle.
In the real world, grabbing the back of a huge, powerful insect like this
wouldn't be the end of the struggle. But this was a virtual world designed with
usability in mind. The instant she had a hold of the rare insect, a triumphant
fanfare sounded, and the stag beetle folded its wings and acquiesced. She
landed in the grass with a soft thud.
"I did iiiiit! I caught the royal triton stag beetle!" she cried, thrusting her left
fist into the air.
Ran approached carefully, her expression four parts surprise to one part fear.
"Th…that was amazing, Yuu. You really caught it with your bare hands."
"Nee-hee-hee! I'm surprised, too. Here, want to hold it?" she said, extending
her hand with the giant beetle.
Ran backed away slowly, shaking her head. "N-no, I'll pass. But
congratulations, Yuuki. What are you going to do with it? Sell it? Keep it?"
"Hmm…Hmmmm…"
She brought the now-docile stag beetle, horn held between her fingers, to her
face for a better look. When trying to catch it, she was only thinking about how
many points it was worth, but after six months of harvesting items in Serene
Garden, she'd never found something as rare as this. Plus, as she looked at the
beetle's face, its big black segmented eyes looked kind of cute to her…
The problem was that raising insects in this world cost money for food, just
like in real life. If the bugs were good enough to win the bug battle events, they
could make back that money on their own, but just being able to participate in
those events required clearing lots of hurdles.
"What should I do…?" she worried, staring at the beetle as its mandibles
waggled back and forth.
"Aaaaaaah!!" Suddenly, there came a scream from her left, and she found
herself toppling in the other direction.
"Wh-what?!" she yelped along with Ran. Together, they saw another girl
standing there alone, a bit farther away. Of course, it was just a girl's avatar, but
changing gender was impossible in Serene Garden, and an avatar's appearance
was based on real photographs, so this was certainly very close to what the girl
playing the avatar looked like.
Her long green hair was tied into a ponytail (hairstyle and color could be
customized), and she wore a brown camo-pattern T-shirt and cargo pants with
many pockets—the look of an insect hunter, if there ever was one. A long bugcatching net trembled in her left hand, and her right index finger was pointed
right at Yuuki.
"There! That royton! I was chasing after that for an entire hour!"
It took Yuuki a full three seconds to realize that royton wasn't the beetle's
name but an abbreviation of royal triton. She quickly hid the beetle behind her
back and argued, "W-well, I caught it."
The rules of Serene Garden said that whoever picked up an item, whether
plant or ore or insect, got to keep it. You might argue, "This is my collecting
spot" or "I saw it first," but those statements held no real power. The girl in the
camo shirt knew that, and she clammed up briefly, but she wouldn't remain
silent.
"You don't look like a bug hunter to me, though. You don't have a cage. How
are you going to take it back home with you?"
Now it was Yuuki who had no answer.
She had a point: Without a special insect cage like the one attached to the
girl's waist, she couldn't put the beetle in her inventory. And with it stuck in her
hand right now, the beetle was slowly but surely weakening. It would heal right
away if put in a cage with food and water, but it would take twenty minutes at
the quickest to reach the nearest town. Yuuki didn't know how much of the stag
beetle's life would be lost, but if she ended up killing the precious insect, she'd
never stop regretting it. The only reason Yuuki hadn't taken part in the bug
battles was because she was afraid of losing her pet through a careless
accident.
Ran put a gentle hand on Yuuki's shoulder and said, "Yuu…"
Yuuki understood what her sister was telling her. She pulled the hand holding
the royal triton stag beetle out from behind her back, said a silent good-bye to
her catch, then held it out toward the bug-hunting girl.
"Here. You can have it."
The ponytailed girl's eyes went wide with surprise. "Uh…I can?"
"You said you wanted it, didn't you?" Yuuki said, taking a step forward. But
the girl looked down at herself in a panic.
"B-but I don't have anything worth exchanging for it…"
You couldn't trade with other players using currens in Serene Garden, only
barter with items you were carrying. No players walked around with items
worth the value of a superrare insect.
Yuuki smiled and said, "It doesn't have to be a trade. I bet this bug would be
happier if it was raised by someone like you, who works really hard to be a
proper bug hunter."
"..."
But the girl's initial boldness had all but melted away. She didn't move or
speak. She'd probably said that because she was incensed that someone else
had caught the thing she was chasing, but she hadn't actually considered that
the person might give it to her anyway.
Yuuki was wise enough to read this in the other girl's body language but not
wise enough to know the right thing to say now. Instead, Ran said softly, "Then
how about you trade by allowing Yuu to give the bug a name?"
The girl's face lit up, and she nodded repeatedly. "Y-yeah! Yeah! That's good!
You name it!"
"Huh…? Me?"
Yuuki was in a panic. She knew she wasn't great at coming up with names.
When creating their avatars for Serene Garden, Aiko had gone with Ran because
it was an alternate reading of the Ai kanji in her name, but Yuuki just went with
her regular name.
If she gave up now, it would be a waste, so she did her best. But after at least
a dozen seconds of thinking, she came up with…
"…Ummm…how about…Roy…?"
It's the same thing!!
But despite her fears, the ponytailed girl just smiled and nodded.
"That's nice! I like simple names like that. Then I'll register this bug's name as
Roy!"
"Okay!"
Yuuki said a silent farewell to her stag beetle, then presented it to the girl
again.
The girl cupped her hands to accept the beetle, then gazed, rapt, at the
beautiful royal-blue luster of the beetle's carapace. Then she carefully
transferred it to her insect cage, opened her player window, and put the whole
cage in her inventory. The stag beetle's life value couldn't drop anymore after
that.
The girl picked up the net she'd dropped and put that in her inventory, too,
then she straightened and performed a deep, courteous bow.
"Thank you so much for giving it to me! I've been looking for that insect
forever since coming here, so I'm really, really happy to have it!"
Yuuki understood that when she said "coming here," she wasn't talking about
Teal Hills but Serene Garden, the VR hospice program. She asked her, "How long
have you been here?"
"Since just after it started, so it's been about eight months—oh, gosh! I never
even told you my name. Hello, I'm Merida. Nice to meet you!"
Merida grinned and stuck out her right hand, which Yuuki accepted and
shook.
"I'm Yuuki! Nice to meet you!"
Ran took Merida's hand next. "I'm Ran. I'm Yuuki's big sister. It's nice to meet
you, Miss Merida."
"Just call me Merida. I'm only slightly older than you two, if anything. It's
really nice to meet you. I hope we can be…good…frien…"
Merida's voice unexpectedly wavered, then vanished. Her green ponytail
fluttered as she suddenly lurched to the side, and Yuuki had to reach out with
both hands to steady her.
They moved her over to the shade under the tree where Yuuki had caught
Roy the stag beetle and sat her down on the grass. Merida quickly recovered
after that.
She blinked a couple times, then noticed Yuuki's and Ran's concerned looks
and hunched her shoulders with guilt.
"…I'm sorry. I was so excited about getting Roy that I think I got a little too
carried away," she said, giggling guiltily. Yuuki smiled back at her but couldn't
fully contain her worry.
The people engaged in Serene Garden weren't called players, and that was for
a reason. Accordingly, users avoided saying that word for the most part. People
weren't coming to this world simply because it was fun.
The point of the VR hospice program was to provide palliative care—easing
the suffering of their illness and improving quality of life. Without exception,
everyone found here was dealing with a very serious disease. In fact, you
couldn't even connect and make an account unless it was through the facilities
at a hospital. That meant Merida was connecting to this world through a
hospital located somewhere in Japan.
They didn't know Merida's condition yet. But if her avatar within the VR world
collapsed, that meant it wasn't just dizziness or anemia but a condition afflicting
the brain itself, which was connected through the AmuSphere.
Of course, if the situation were bad enough, the AmuSphere would
automatically disconnect, and her avatar would disappear. Since Merida
recovered right away, she had to be right that it was just a temporary problem.
But on the other hand, Merida was so relaxed about it that it conversely
amplified Yuuki's concern. She was used to this phenomenon. It was something
that happened all the time.
Merida could feel Yuuki's state of mind through the hand on her back, so she
smiled reassuringly. "Ha-ha, really, I'm fine. If I stay still for a moment, I'll be
better again…There. I'm completely fine now."
She hopped up onto her feet and bounced into the air. Her agility was so
smooth that it spoke to how much experience she had here. But the fact that
she'd been in Serene Garden since nearly the point it started meant that she'd
needed this palliative care for that long of a period already.
Mindful of Merida's symptoms, Yuuki stood up, too. But the other girl took a
step back and gave them a piercing glare.
"Wh…what is it?" Yuuki asked, wondering if the matching dresses she and her
sister were wearing didn't look good after all. But Merida just flashed a cheerful
smile.
"Sorry, didn't mean to stare at you like that. Those dresses are very cute, but
they're not really suited for bug hunting. I was just thinking how impressive it
was that you caught the royal triton dressed like that. They fly away as soon as
they hear a single footstep. How did you move so quietly through the grass?"
"Ummm…" Yuuki stopped to think, trying to remember what exactly she'd
done.
Ran giggled and explained, "Yuu didn't go through the grass. She jumped from
stake to stake, standing in the water over there. She went boing, boing, boing!"
"Oh, I see."
Yuuki chuckled, embarrassed that she couldn't remember what she'd been
doing barely fifteen minutes ago, but she wasn't expecting Merida's smile to
vanish.
"Whaaat?! On those tiny posts?! You can do that?!"
"Um, y-yeah. I guess. You can just call me Yuuki, by the way!"
"Oh…w-well, Yuuki, can you stand on one foot for me?"
"Huh? Okay…"
Yuuki did as Merida asked and bent her left knee so that she was only
standing on her right leg, though she had no idea where Merida was going with
this. She held out her arms a bit for balance and said, "There's no muscle
fatigue here, so I can stand on one leg for forever. So can you, right, Sis?"
"I…I dunno…I've never tried it," said Ran without much confidence. She rose
up on one leg, too. There was a brief wobble at first, but soon her body was
stable.
Until they had to leave school in fourth grade, Yuuki and Ran had taken
normal physical education. They grew at nearly the same rate, because they
were twins, but when it came to running speed, throwing control, and even test
scores, Ran was always just a bit better—a source of secret frustration for her
sister.
I at least want to show I can beat her at standing on one leg in the virtual
world! Yuuki swore to herself. But after about a minute, Merida suddenly burst
into rapturous applause.
"Yuuki, Ran, that's amazing! I've never seen anyone who can stand on one leg
for so long on this side!"
The sisters were taken aback; it seemed like a bit of an exaggeration. Merida
clasped her hands together with consternation.
"If your FC numbers are that high, you could be incredible insect hunters! Say,
why don't you switch over to being hunters?! I can teach you all about it!"
Even as she balanced on one foot, Ran lifted her hands in a placating motion,
trying to calm down the excited girl. "Merida, what is FC?" she asked gently.
"I've never heard of it, either," said Yuuki.
Merida took a deep breath to slow herself down, realizing that she was
confusing her audience. "I'm sorry for getting carried away," she said. "I'm
always like this. Well, FC stands for Full-Dive Conformation. It means how well
you adapt to the virtual world. Standing on one leg is the simplest and quickest
method of testing it. The sense of balance and gravity is slightly different here,
so it's hard to stand on one leg for an extended time unless your body is able to
adjust. I'm sure my total time spent here is much longer than yours, but I can
only manage about forty seconds at best."
"Oh, I didn't realize…," said Yuuki.
Startled by the breadth of Merida's knowledge about full-dive systems, Yuuki
looked down at the foot she had planted on the ground. She could remember
being a little confused at the fine differences from the real world when she first
used the Medicuboid, but once she got the chance to run and jump around the
vivid, exciting virtual world, she got used to it right away. She couldn't
remember Ran complaining about a difference in sensations, either.
"…Meaning there are personal differences in this FC thing?" Yuuki asked
nonchalantly.
"That's right," Merida said gravely. "It's rare, but sometimes the first
connection test gets you an FNC, meaning you don't conform to full-diving. It
has to be a shock to spend all that money on a Ner—on an AmuSphere and get
told it won't work for you. But there are more places out there now where you
can test it before you buy one."
"Hmm…"
Upon learning this, Yuuki was relieved that she and her sister hadn't gotten an
FNC. Medicuboid Test Unit Two and Ran's augmented NerveGear were
provided by the hospital, of course. Dr. Kurahashi said it wasn't even close to
proper atonement for how the two got sick, but when they interacted with
other people in Serene Garden, Yuuki was always left with a particular thought:
She and her sister wouldn't be able to visit these places ordinarily without
buying two of those very expensive AmuSpheres.
In fact, while her sister might have excellent physical reflexes, maybe the only
reason Yuuki could stand on one foot for minutes on end was because she got
to use the much more advanced Medicuboid.
The moment this thought popped into her head, Yuuki felt bad for engaging in
this competition with Ran and started to lower her leg.
But before it touched the ground, Ran shouted, "Aaah, I can't do it anymore!"
and clung to her side. They both tumbled to the grass.
"Hey, what was that for, Sis?"
"You touched the ground first, Yuu, so I win the balance competition!"
"Hey, no fair! I could have kept going!" she protested, forgetting her brief
resignation just seconds before.
Merida watched it happen, wide-eyed, and burst into bubbling laughter. "Ahha-ha, you two are so close. I wish I had a sister to be friends with…"
Suddenly, she clammed up and stopped smiling. It must have occurred to her
what it meant that the two sisters were in a VR hospice together.
Yuuki wanted to tell her not to feel bad about it but couldn't find the right
way to say it. Fortunately, Ran did.
"I'm sure you'd be a great big sister, Merida. You're very cool and very
knowledgeable," she said, pulling Yuuki up from the grass. "You seem to know a
lot about full-dive games. Do you play others aside from Serene Garden?"
"Mmm, SG's my main game for now. I'm too busy catching and raising bugs,"
she replied, the smile returning but a bit more tempered than before. "Before
SG, I played a different game…but they found my disease before it officially
launched, so I was too late to start."
"Oh? What game?" asked Yuuki with great interest; she didn't know much
about other VR worlds.
Merida's smile seemed to be cradling some source of pain. She answered with
another question: "Do you have more time to talk?"
"Ummm…"
She looked at the clock readout in the lower right of her field of view. It was
three thirty in the afternoon. There was a fair amount of time before dinner at
six, and they didn't have any tests or meetings on the schedule today.
"I think we have another two hours," Yuuki said.
The bug hunter nodded. "Then why don't we go back to the village and talk
over some tea?"
3
In addition to the capital of Serenity, there was one village or town in each of
the four cardinal directions. The village in the eastern region of Teal Hills was
called Leute. There was a teleport gate in the square at the center of town that
would take you instantly to the capital.
Merida passed through the town gate first and turned back to face the sisters.
"Which do you like better, crepes or ice cream?"
They instantly said "Crepes!" in perfect harmony. Merida gasped.
"Y-you didn't hesitate a moment."
"Hee-hee-hee."
The sisters chuckled and shared a brief look. Crepes were their late mother's
secret best recipe. They could eat her homemade crepes every single day:
crepes sucrées, which were baked golden brown and folded around whipped
cream and fruit; crepes salées, which were savory with cheese and ham; even
crepes suzette, which were served with a sweet orange-citrus sauce on top.
Even in the hospital, they had the chance to eat crepes in the cafeteria,
although they weren't quite as good as their mother's. Since going into the
clean room, that was no longer an option for Yuuki.
Ran, on the other hand, got to have normal hospital food and could visit the
cafeteria. But in a show of solidarity with Yuuki, she was only eating crepes in
the virtual world, she said. Yuuki scolded her and said Ran should have some
with her real body, but her sister claimed, "It doesn't taste good if I eat them
alone."
Merida had no idea about any of this, of course, but she seemed to sense it
was a special thing for them. She pounded the chest of her camo shirt and said,
"Then I'll show you to the best crepes around!"
"Huh…? There are more places to eat than the restaurants in the square?"
Ran asked. Merida just grinned and started walking.
The village of Leute was placed atop a little hill. The stone-cobbled main
street ran past brick houses that looked like they belonged in some mountain
village in the Alps. At most, Serene Garden could support about a thousand
connections, and because the total number of hospice patients in the nation
was around thirty thousand, it was far from ubiquitous. But since there were
only five towns in this world, the number of players strolling the main street felt
rather high.
Merida took them off that crowded road packed with businesses and down a
maze of alleys, turning them left and right and back and forth.
Serene Garden had no in-game map function. Her ability to steer them around
with absolute confidence spoke not just to her complete knowledge of the
complicated layout of Leute but her familiarity with existing in a virtual space
itself. Yuuki followed, feeling more and more curious about whatever game
Merida had been playing before this one, and was just losing her sense of
direction entirely when they came to a more open space again.
There was a small terrace jutting out of the western slope of the hill that gave
them a clear view of the meadow below, sparkling in the afternoon sun. Faded
into the distance was a series of folds in the land as the island met the sea in
fjords. That was the edge of the world.
There was a single table on the terrace with a parasol overhead. Behind it was
a tiny café exuding a sweet smell.
"Yay, the outside table is empty!" Merida said with a smile. She circled behind
the sisters and pushed them into the chairs that overlooked the meadow. Then
she sat across from them and slid them menus from the table.
"This is my favorite place to eat in Leute. This one's on me. Order whatever
you like!"
Yuuki and Ran were briefly arrested by the beauty of the sight below them,
but this comment got them to look up and shake their heads.
"Oh, no. You've already shown us this wonderful place—we couldn't ask you
to pay for our food, too," said Ran, getting up from the chair, but Merida waved
her back down.
"What are you talking about? The crepes here don't even begin to match the
value of the royal triton stag beetle. It's the least I can possibly do!"
"Well…if you insist…"
Ran sat down again; Yuuki was already looking over the corkboard menu. The
virtual refrigerator had no limits on what it could hold, but even still, the
number of words on the menu was astonishing. There were five types of batter,
ten types of cream, twenty varieties of fruit, thirty sauces, and fifty toppings, all
of which were available to combine. The possibilities were essentially endless.
"Amazing…but how am I supposed to choose…?" Yuuki wailed.
Luckily, Ran spurred her on with a cheery smile. "Then I'll go with smooth
honey for my batter, milky whipped cream, ruby strawberries and fresh
mandarins for my fruit, rich chocolate sauce, and toppings of fresh pistachio
and caramel crunch!"
"..."
Yuuki stared at her older sister, aghast, as she tapped the items on the touch
pad menu. Even Merida looked shocked. There were many ways in which Yuuki
was inferior to her sister, and foremost among them was the ability to make
decisions. She couldn't recall ever seeing Ran waffle between options in her life.
When her order was in, she looked up and asked, "What are you having,
Yuu?"
"…The same as you, Sis," she said, waving the white flag. Merida chimed in
with "Me too!"
Ran bumped the number of orders up to three. "All right, it's your treat, as
you said."
She handed the menu over to Merida, who pushed the button to complete
the order and paid the currens for three crepes. Barely ten seconds later, an
NPC waitress came rushing out of the building with three plates.
The crepes were folded in the familiar cone shape but were much bigger than
they expected. Gobs of cream and fruit popped out from the pale-yellow
pancake, and the sauce and toppings glittered among them.
"Ooh, it looks so yummy!" exclaimed Yuuki, clasping her hands before her
chest in a very brief prayer before accepting her crepe. In the real world, it
would be nearly impossible to eat such a thing without it falling apart, but here,
as long as she didn't let go of it, there was no worry about the cream or fruit
spilling out and landing on her clothes.
"Here goes!" Ran said, speaking for the trio, and she opened her mouth as
wide as it could go for a big bite. The smooth, thin crepe broke with just the
right amount of texture, giving way to fluffy light cream and a large, fresh
strawberry.
Right when they'd first visited this world, it felt very strange and wrong to
"eat" food that wasn't actually real—but that soon became normal to them.
There was a bit of a trick to chewing and tasting the same way as it worked in
the real world, but if you closed your eyes and chewed without moving your
tongue too much, the sensation of tasting wasn't too different.
The crepe, cream, and strawberry melted together and vanished when she
swallowed, creating a brief descending sensation in her throat. Then Yuuki
opened her eyes and shouted, "Merida, this crepe is a-mazing! It's completely
different from the kind at the shop near the teleport gate!"
Her brand-new friend beamed with pure delight. "Right?! I think there must
be more data to process, so they put this in a more out-of-the-way spot. I've
had to work really hard to learn the way here without getting lost. What do you
think, Ran…? Is it good?"
Ran looked up from her crepe, finishing her third large bite. She bobbed her
head deeply and said with grave importance, "I've decided that I will continue
visiting this shop until I've eaten every crepe they make."
"Ah-ha-ha-ha! That'll be tough—good luck! I've been coming here for half a
year, and I still haven't tried half the combinations."
"Tell me your recommended flavors for next time, then."
Meanwhile, Yuuki was busily shrinking the surface area of the bountiful crepe.
Unfortunately, she couldn't say it was more delicious than her mother's crepes
—those were something that would never exist again. But just being here and
eating the crepe with the girl she'd randomly met and become quick friends
with made it feel many times more delicious than the actual taste data of the
item itself.
Before the disease presented itself, when she was still in elementary school,
Yuuki had many good friends. She always longed for the lunch period, when
they would slide their desks together and eat the same items from the
cafeteria.
But that daily treat was lost forever from the moment the rumor that she was
HIV positive got around. No longer would any of her classmates slide their desks
over to hers. Yuuki had to eat her lunch alone in a corner of the room every day.
All her favorites, like pork curry and glass-noodle soup and milk pudding,
suddenly didn't taste so good anymore.
In a sense, this was the first time she'd eaten anything with a friend since
coming to the hospital. Even if it was a virtual crepe she was holding, and her
friend was a stranger whose real name and face were a mystery, and they were
eating in a virtual café in a world that didn't exist, the feelings of pain and
warmth that wrenched at her heart were very, very real.
"...Yuuki."
The sound of Merida's voice snapped Yuuki's eyes open again. She realized
they were welling up with tears as she ate, so she quickly put down her food
and rubbed at her eyes. But the tears wouldn't go away. As Ran had told her
before, the virtual world tended to overemote what you were feeling, which
made it hard to hold back tears.
"I-I'm fine, just a bit…a bit…," she mumbled. Ran gently patted her on the
back. Thanks to her years of experience being comforted by her sister, Yuuki
quickly felt the tears dry up.
"…I'm sorry for bursting into tears like that, Merida. The crepe just tasted so
good, and I was having so much fun that…"
She beamed at Merida, who seemed to be holding back something herself.
Yuuki tossed the last bit of crepe into her mouth, swallowed it, and exhaled.
"To tell you the truth," Merida said, "I found myself crying alone a lot until
recently. In fact, I still feel sad when I remember. Sad, frustrated, angry, ready
to cry like a little baby."
Her voice was soft, and her gaze pointed out across the meadow below. The
sun was much weaker now, and its light was golden and fading on the vast field.
"…Are you thinking of the game you played before coming here?" Ran asked.
The deep-green ponytail swayed. "Yes. I only got to play it for a month…and it
was only a beta test, not the full release. It was August of 2022, about a whole
year before SG started up. I wore NerveGear, not an AmuSphere, and got to
play the world's first VRMMORPG…"
After a brief time lag, the meaning of her words sank into Yuuki's mind. She
recalled the news article Ran had shown her before they started on their herbcollecting run. The name left her lips, which felt cracked and dry.
"…Sword Art Online…"
Merida's head barely moved. She still wore that sad little smile. "Yes. I played
the SAO beta test and got into a midsize guild. It was really fun…and that month
passed by in a blink. On the final day, I made a promise to everyone that we'd
meet up again when it launched in November. It was just after that when they
found the tumor on my brain. I couldn't play these games anymore. They took
away my NerveGear."
"…But…that means…," Ran murmured.
Merida understood what she was going to say. "That's right. Because of the
tumor, I didn't get trapped inside that game. The tumor saved my life, the
doctors and my parents said, so it's sure to heal very soon. But…the world isn't
that kind. My brain tumor was in a place where it couldn't be removed. I've
been doing chemotherapy and radiation, but it just won't disappear. I've been
dealing with it for a year and a half already."
She chuckled and pressed her fingertips against her temples, as though
feeling around for her brain. Neither Yuuki nor Ran seemed to know what to
say.
So Merida's collapse at the tree where they caught the stag beetle was
because of a brain condition. Malignant tumors, a kind of cancer, weren't an
unfamiliar thing to the sisters. As their immune systems fell to the point of
reaching AIDS, the lymphocytes in their blood were at increased risk of
developing cancer. The regular testing hadn't picked up signs of tumors in Yuuki
or Ran yet, but even being in a clean room wouldn't prevent Yuuki's cells from
becoming cancerous.
Merida lowered her hands, leaned against the back of her chair, and gazed up
at the sky, which was a blend of blue and pale yellow.
"I can never tell my parents this," she said, searching for the words, "but
there are times when I think…if I'm just going to die from this tumor, I'd rather
have been trapped in Aincrad. At least then, I could be fighting alongside my
friends…"
""…!""
Yuuki and Ran gasped. Aincrad, from what they understood, was the name of
the flying castle that was the setting of Sword Art Online. When the game
launched, ten thousand players were trapped inside and placed under severe
rules: Logging out was impossible, and if the player fell to zero HP, they would
actually die. Over the year and a half that this situation continued, three
thousand of those players had died. In terms of fatalities caused by a single
person's actions, it was surely the greatest total in the history of Japan—
perhaps even the world.
They couldn't ask Merida why she would want to be inside such a terrible
game.
The five-year survival rate for malignant brain tumors was about 30 percent
on average. In other words, of all the patients who came down with the tumors
at the same time, about 70 percent would be dead within five years. That was
vastly worse than SAO's 30 percent rate.
"…That's a good point," Ran murmured. Yuuki glanced over at her sister and
saw the usual calm look on her face. But those dark-blue eyes were just a little
brighter than she was used to seeing. "If I were a beta tester of Sword Art
Online, I might have thought the same way you do, Merida. My only choice with
disease is to withstand and resist it—but at least monsters, I can fight with my
own power."
Merida looked surprised by this. She glanced down at the empty plate on the
table. It was completely clean, as though there had never been a crepe topped
with dollops of whipped cream resting upon it.
"…Yeah. If I'm just going to wither away and die on a hospital bed…I'd rather
jump right into SAO and die to save someone else. At least that way…I might
feel like my life…had meaning..."
With a soft splat, a clear droplet fell onto the plate. It caught the fading light
of the sun as it fell, shining brilliantly before it simply vanished.
A life with meaning.
The phrase stabbed Yuuki deep inside her heart.
There was something she'd asked herself, over and over, for much of her life
—something she'd never said to her late parents or to her sister. Why was she
alive? She was going to die before she grew to be an adult, leaving behind only
agony for her father and mother, and trouble for her teachers and friends at
school, achieving nothing. What was the meaning of it all?
She hadn't found the answer to that question yet. Maybe she wouldn't find it
until the very end of her life. But Yuuki couldn't bring herself to agree with
Merida. She breathed in and out, trying to work out how to mold the feeling
bubbling up in her chest into words. Then she felt Ran's hand on her back,
warm and gentle. At last, she found her voice.
"Don't say that…don't say that, Merida! If you did such a thing, you'd never
see your mom and dad again. You shouldn't put them through that heartache…
At least…at least…"
At least you can still see them. Not like me and my sister.
Merida seemed to pick up on what she didn't say. She lifted her head, face
streaked with tears, and stared right at Yuuki with big wet eyes. There was the
barest hint of a smile on her lips.
"…Mmm…You're right. Yuuki, Ran, I'm sorry. I'm being weird."
She rubbed her face like Yuuki did earlier, wiping away the tears, then
beamed, dimpling her cheeks.
"I'm all right! I'm going to take good care of Roy, because I have a big goal
now: to win the next Insect Battle Tournament! Plus…it's not like I can even get
into Aincrad, anyway. There's no playing SAO without NerveGear, and the only
addresses it will accept are the ones from the IPs of the players already
connected."
That made sense; aside from the NerveGear being worn by the Incident's
victims, all other NerveGear had been seized, and she hadn't heard about a
single person logging in to SAO on their own after it started. Yuuki relaxed a
little and smiled back.
"I'll cheer you on in the tournament. You have to win it!"
"Don't worry!" said Merida, pounding her chest. As she stretched, she
remembered something: "Oh, right. What other VR games do you play?
Yuuki had just stuck the rest of her crepe into her mouth, so Ran answered
instead.
"This is the only one we've ever done."
"Awww, that's a waste! Especially when you can stand on one leg for so long.
I'm sure you would do great in any action-based game…"
Yuuki and her sister shared a look.
They knew that more and more VR games had come out for the AmuSphere
in the last year. Around the same time that Serene Garden started, there had
been a popular MMORPG called ALfheim Online, where the players were all
fairies that could fly. There were also zombie-based horror shooters, actionadventure games about exploring ruins, and other traditionally popular genres.
But she and Ran had never even brought up the idea of playing a different
game. That was probably because she felt guilty about the idea of using the
Medicuboid to simply "play around." Ran had been provided with the modified
NerveGear for free, so she would feel the same way about it.
But how could they explain that to Merida? Ran grinned and said, "It's nice of
you to suggest, but AmuSphere games are pretty expensive, right? We can't buy
them on our allowance."
That, at least, was true. A little while after their parents died, the girls talked it
over and decided to minimize the allowance they received from their
inheritance. They wanted to donate as much of that as possible to nonprofit
organizations supporting children suffering from severe diseases. It was hard for
them to feel good about buying a video game that cost nearly ten thousand
yen.
But Merida just looked surprised and shook her head. "Oh, that's no problem!
There are games that are free to play, and you can make money just by selling
items."
"Huh…? You don't have to pay for the game itself?!" they asked in shock.
She nodded more firmly this time. "Yes! You just download and install the
game, and you can play it. If you want to buy helpful items for convenience or
get really cool-looking gear, it'll cost real money, but I don't spend anything at
all."
"Ooooh…what kind of game is it?" Ran asked, unexpectedly hooked by this
pitch. Merida reached toward her left side and made a show of pretending to
grab something, then whipped her hand across the table.
"I haven't been in there in a little while, but it's a Japanese-style MMO called
Asuka Empire. You turn into samurai or ninjas or shrine maidens to fight each
other. It looks completely different from SG, too…There are unbelievably huge
castles and gorgeous temples. It's really fun."
"…Fight…," Yuuki mumbled.
Of course there was fighting; it was a game. But she felt intimidated by the
idea of fighting with other players in a virtual setting using swords and guns. It
wasn't like watching your character move around on a screen…The opponents
were avatars, but they were real. She couldn't imagine physically performing
the violence of swinging, striking, and punching other people that way.
But to her surprise, Ran simply said, "That sounds really fun."
"Right?!" Merida leaned over the table, her eyes sparkling. "Hey, would you
want to come check out Asuka? I'll show you how it works!"
"Hmm, well…"
"I'll take pictures of you wearing your miko outfits or samurai armor or
whatever! You'll look great in them!"
"Hmm, well…"
"Also, there's all kinds of traditional sweets you can eat! Like anmitsu and
oshiruko and warabi mochi!"
"...!!"
Yuuki didn't miss the little twitch of Ran's shoulders. She knew that after her
mother's homemade crepes, the one thing that Ran loved most that she
couldn't get inside Serene Garden or from the hospital cafeteria was oshiruko, a
dessert of hot, sweet red bean soup, with a big chewy mochi rice cake dipped
inside.
She could see that her sister was trapped between guilt about enjoying a
game for its own sake, yearning for a new and mysterious world, and
temptation for the flavor of sweet red beans. So to help with the final push,
Yuuki added, "Since Merida's inviting us, we should just go with her, Sis! I'm
sure the doctor will let us!"
Ran looked back at her in mild surprise, then gave a rare full smile and
nodded. "Yeah…let's check it out!"
"Yay!" Merida cheered, clapping her hands over her head. She glanced
upward. "Today's…probably a stretch. I'll send you a message to your SG
account about how to install Asuka Empire. How about we meet up at one
o'clock tomorrow?"
"Sure, that works," replied Ran. Merida hopped to her feet, ponytail
bouncing, and stuck out both hands toward the sisters.
"Yuuki, Ran, I'm so happy I got to meet you and become friends with you. I
think we're going to have a great time!"
Feeling the joy and the light in her eyes and words, Yuuki joined her sister in
standing and grasped the hand of the first friend she'd made in ages.