Rinko Koujiro walked down the wide corridor.
As an accomplished researcher and lecturer, she was as meticulous on the outside as she was within. Her short hair was trimmed neatly around her ears, balanced between seriousness and a woman's softness, and the white lab coat she wore had been a constant part of her for years.
Strictly speaking, she was pretty. But with little expression and almost no adornment, her face came close to a rigid kind of plainness. Only the small beauty mark beneath the corner of her eye gave her a little depth.
Holding her records, she passed through the band of sunlight beside the windows.
The white of her lab coat turned even sharper in the light. Or perhaps it only matched her own pallor.
There were many kinds of white. The spotless white of falling snow, untouched by dust. Or the hollow white of emptiness.
Most people would place her in the latter category.
Students who knew her greeted her politely as they passed. Rinko returned the greeting with a small, proper smile, but said nothing.
That was exactly her position here.
An excellent teacher. A respected scholar, worthy of standing beside that genius in the sea of intellect.
Her knowledge and ability were trusted, but only that much. No student had ever come to her to talk about anything beyond academics.
Rinko slowly descended the stairs, her expression returning to its calm, undisturbed stillness.
It was the hour when most students were in class, so only her footsteps echoed in the stairwell.
Soft footsteps. Elegant footsteps. A woman's footsteps.
Three years ago, that man would still have been beside her.
They had both worn these unfashionable white lab coats. If one were feeling romantic, they could even be called matching outfits. Officially, they were a couple, but most people looked at them as senior and junior, laboratory colleagues, academic confidants who understood each other.
For Rinko, who lacked most ordinary social ties, that man's presence beside her was the only thing no one found strange. If anything, people had grown used to it.
Kayaba.
Three years ago, he had been a genius the world watched with admiration. Three years later, he was a demonic criminal everyone spat on.
And she had changed as well. From colleague and girlfriend, to collaborator in the search for Kayaba, to an exemplary citizen who had received official recognition.
Three years, huh...?
Rinko stepped out of the school building. Her carefully measured stride suddenly stopped, and she looked back at the building that had once been as close to a home as anything in her life.
He and she had graduated from here, one after the other. They had done research here, one after the other.
And now, she was leaving.
The paperwork was complete. She would soon leave Japan and take a position at the California Institute of Technology.
In a sense, it was a better job. Better pay, better conditions. Her colleagues and superiors had all congratulated her.
What would happen to the lab?
There had always been coffee stains on the desk, left by that man's careless spills. Wiped clean, spilled again, wiped clean again. He had been almost compulsive when it came to numbers, yet in daily life he was as helpless as if he were missing half his limbs. If he had merely been careless, that would have been one thing, but he barely paid attention to the world at all.
The records he had left at this school had probably been covered over like something filthy.
Rinko had often wondered whether she might have come closer to that stubborn heart of his if she had studied psychology instead.
But if she had, she likely never would have had the chance to work with him. Kayaba had no need for an assistant who could not understand his intentions. And if that had happened, perhaps he truly would have been alone from beginning to end.
"You really were an idiot... both you and me."
Rinko wiped the corner of her eye and began walking again.
When she looked ahead once more, she felt someone's gaze and turned instinctively toward it.
For a moment, she thought she had seen that man's eyes.
...eyes with no malice in them, only a thirst for an answer.
She froze.
The person himself was completely different. His hair was too long for Kayaba, gathered into a small tail, and he wore black casual clothes, pale jeans, and old sneakers.
And yet, those eyes alone seemed to have been projected out of the depths of her memory, straight from Kayaba's face.
She stood where she was and began to study him. He was not a student here. Nor was he a member of the staff. At the very least, no student would dare stand before a serious, exacting teacher like her with a cigarette in his mouth.
The man smiled amiably, dropped the cigarette into the ashtray slot on the trash can, walked toward Rinko, and extended his right hand to her while she was still slightly at a loss.
"Forgive the intrusion. You are Ms. Rinko Koujiro, aren't you?"
So he was from outside the school after all.
"I am. And you are...?"
"One of the people you helped," the man said honestly. "I am a survivor of Sword Art Online."
Rinko's expression shifted. Then she lowered her head, apologizing on behalf of someone she could not name.
"I see... I am truly sorry."
"He probably would have said 'regrettable' rather than 'sorry.'"
Rinko looked at him with a hint of caution.
"Maybe you have heard of me somewhere," the man said slowly, looking into her eyes. "My name is Suzuki Satoru ."
Rinko wavered.
"Suzuki... Satoru?"
Second Adapter, awakened. Infinite Sword. Yurnero. Suzuki Satoru.
In an instant, she remembered the words she had seen that day in the records on Kayaba's computer.
At the same time, she understood.
The person standing before her...
"I am the one who defeated Heathcliff. If you say I killed Kayaba, you would not be wrong either."
As if he knew what she was thinking, the man spoke softly.
"I apologize again for disturbing you, Ms. Koujiro."
"But please allow me a little of your time. There are things I need your help with."
Their eyes met again.
Rinko felt it deeply.
It was as if she were looking at Kayaba.
...
"Sorry. At the moment, the best I can do is invite you to a little ramen shop like this." Satoru gave a sheepish laugh and lowered his voice as he spoke to Rinko across the table. After all, the owner cooking their noodles could not hear that, or they might be thrown out.
Rinko sat with perfect posture, looking more like she belonged at a lecture podium or on a panel at a major conference than in a small neighborhood shop eating a large bowl of ramen with thick slices of pork.
Her washed-out white lab coat even gave her an air of being untouched by worldly smoke and fire.
"It's all right... I am a regular here."
"Huh...?"
Satoru, caught off guard, immediately heard the owner's powerful voice.
"No scallions, same as always? And the meat? The thick, chunky slices, right?"
"Of course. Thank you. Make it extra-large, please." Rinko swept the hair by her ear back with a graceful, feminine motion.
"Got it. What about you, young man?" After getting Rinko's answer, the owner picked up a bowl about the size of Satoru's head and asked him.
"M-medium is fine. I don't eat that much."
"Tsk. No ambition." The owner snorted through his nose.
"..."
"It is close to the school, the food comes quickly, it fills you up, and the nutrition is decent. I come here often. Sometimes I brought some back for him too... but he was always convinced that canned food and instant meals were humanity's greatest inventions, because they saved time." Rinko looked at Satoru and slowly managed a smile.
"Yeah, I really can't picture that guy biting into sushi or tearing roast chicken apart with his hands." Satoru gave a dry laugh.
"Consistent inside and out. That was him," Rinko said, a little sadly.
Satoru paused.
"I didn't mean to make you remember painful things. But I did come to see you because you were his girlfriend."
"What is it you need?"
"You understand him better than anyone, don't you?" Satoru hesitated for a moment, then spoke without wavering. "I won't beat around the bush... You were involved in Sword Art Online too, weren't you?"
"...Why do you think that?"
"The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications told me about your cooperation, and the timing lined up a little too neatly with my clearing the game. There's also my own intuition. Beyond that... I saw it once," Satoru said.
"Saw it?"
"I'm not a professor like you people, so it is hard for me to explain. But these eyes really did see you through his pupils." Satoru touched the area around his eyes. "According to him, it was probably Fluctlight resonance."
"Fluctlight..." Rinko repeated softly.
"I have questions about it, but that is only one reason I came to you. More importantly," Satoru's tone grew more serious, "do you know that several hundred players still have not been freed from virtual space?"
Rinko looked at him, shock and doubt crossing her face.
"That man promised that Aincrad had truly been cleared and that every surviving player would return. I believe him. He would not lie about that. But the fact remains that some players have been detained. And most importantly, I want information from you about the support program he mentioned, the artificial intelligence codenamed Sheeta."
Satoru bowed his head to her.
"Please. Tell me."
"If you were Kayaba's collaborator, and if you observed Argus's SAO server until the very end, then you must be able to give me an answer. Please... I am asking you."
"..."
"Every one of your questions would require a long explanation," Rinko said with a wry smile. "And they are all connected."
She sighed silently.
"Artificial intelligence is not actually such cutting-edge technology anymore. Even machines on a factory assembly line can be classified as a type of AI. The sister programs he wrote, Sheeta and Yui, only demonstrated the level of work expected of him as a scholar. All of his real energy went into that floating castle."
"Artificial intelligence was only a trivial byproduct."
"I do not know everything about it, but it seems that in the end, the AI originally meant for support was elevated into an autonomous form. You may not understand the meaning of perfect autonomy... but that result is equivalent to creating God."
"God...?" Satoru frowned, unable to connect that cute, clumsy one with a deity.
"Yes. A memory that never forgets what it sees. A mind that can store millions of histories. An intelligence that can perform billions of calculations in an instant. It can understand human history instantly, and surpass it just as quickly. That is the authority of God. In truth, it may be one ultimate form of science."
Rinko gathered her thoughts.
"And the Fluctlight Domain he defined was a manifestation of the human brain approaching the power of autonomous intelligence after breaking free from its limits... It was clearly only his delusion, his obsession, and yet it led to breakthrough discoveries for both humans and intelligence. Perhaps even he never expected that."
"Does Aincrad... truly no longer exist?" Satoru asked.
"Perhaps."
Satoru thought for a moment.
"Do you know the game ALO?"
"A VRMMO... a FullDive type?"
"Yes. It is every bit as advanced as SAO," he said. "Could it have been developed independently?"
Rinko hesitated slightly.
"That should be impossible, shouldn't it...?"
"I think so too. A madman's life work could not be copied that quickly." Satoru smiled. "Even Nobuyuki Sugou could not pull that off, could he?"
"Sugou?" Rinko looked at him.
"After Argus went bankrupt, the SAO servers were entrusted to the Yuuki family's company for maintenance, and ALO is developed and operated by its subsidiary, RECT Progress Inc. The head of the FullDive Division is Nobuyuki Sugou... He is an old acquaintance of yours too, isn't he?"
"Yes. He was our junior, more or less." Rinko nodded hesitantly.
"Then he must have a fair amount of talent. In that case, developing ALO using data from the SAO server becomes possible... And if he had the necessary permissions, could he do what Kayaba originally did and trap players inside?" Satoru spoke slowly, each word distinct.
"But the SAO server has already been handed over to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications..."
"It is possible, isn't it?"
Rinko paused, then nodded.
"Built on the ashes of Aincrad... traces of that floating city should still remain." Satoru clenched his fists.
For a brief moment, silence fell between them.
"Thank you, Ms. Koujiro," Satoru said suddenly.
"No... it's fine. In any case, I will be leaving Japan soon. None of this will have anything to do with me anymore." Rinko gave a tired smile.
"That is a shame. There are still many things I would like to ask you," he said. "But... are you really leaving of your own free will?"
"Why do you ask...?"
"Even I vaguely suspected that you had been Kayaba's assistant. Some people are not just sitting around doing nothing. That bespectacled bureaucrat gave me a bad feeling."
Rinko flinched.
The look in her eyes changed as she looked at him.
He was not Kayaba.
Even if their eyes were the same.
That man would not have had this instinct for reading people.
A being stepping into that unknown realm. An isolated example of an existing Fluctlight Model.
Rinko was suddenly struck by a conclusion she had once reached without knowing him, one that aligned with Kayaba's own view.
The Seed.
A god among men, or someone on the path to becoming one. One or the other.
"The fact that you were recognized as a collaborator rather than an accomplice means someone interfered," Satoru said quietly.
"Do not dig any deeper into that." Rinko's tone abruptly hardened, though perhaps out of professional habit, it sounded more like a well-meaning warning to a student. "Those matters... are very dangerous."
Satoru fell silent for a moment.
"Ms. Koujiro."
He spoke as if he had made up his mind.
"Could you do me one last favor?"
Rinko instinctively wanted to refuse.
But then he played a card she could not refuse.
"I may be able to let you see him one last time."
Rinko seemed to freeze in place.
"Who?" she asked.
"Kayaba."
Satoru clenched his hands.