Kyoji continued while Shino lowered her eyes in embarrassment.
She thought he was going to ask what that man was to her.
What he said was nothing like what she expected.
"That was because he forced you, right? He had something on you, and you had no choice, right?"
"H-huh?"
A strange light flickered in Kyoji's eyes. He leaned forward, his lips trembling unevenly, and words spilled out in a hoarse rush.
"He forced you to snipe his opponents... and in the end, when he let his guard down, you used a grenade and took him down with you. But... that wasn't enough, Asada-san. I told you before... you should have been more careful around him..."
"Ah... no, that's..."
For a moment, Shino was too stunned to speak. She searched frantically for the right words.
"It wasn't coercion or anything like that. During the tournament, I was the one who messed up... My old trauma flared up again while I was diving, and I panicked. Then... I ran into Satoru. And I was the one who said all those awful things."
Kyoji's eyes widened. He listened in silence.
"But... even though he really gets on my nerves, somehow... he reminds me a little of my dad. Maybe that's why I ended up crying like a child. Pretty pathetic, right?"
"...Asada-san... But that was only because your trauma flared up and you couldn't help it, right? You don't... feel anything else for him, do you?"
"Huh...?"
"You told me to wait, didn't you, Asada-san?"
Kyoji knelt on the floor and suddenly leaned toward her. His eyes were tight with strain.
"You said if I waited, someday you'd become mine. So... so I..."
"Shinkawa-kun..."
"Say it!" he demanded. "Say you have nothing to do with him. Say you hate him!"
"Wh-what's gotten into you all of a sudden...?"
The scene from the park before the tournament surfaced in Shino's mind.
She had told Kyoji to wait.
But what she had meant was that he should wait until she could free herself from the weight of her past. Only then could she go back to being an ordinary girl.
"Ah... Asada-san, now that you've won, you're strong enough, right? Your episodes won't happen anymore, right? Then you don't need someone like him. I'll always be with you. I'll protect you for the rest of your life."
Kyoji spoke as if he were dreaming.
Then he stood and came toward her.
One step.
Then another.
All at once, he spread his arms and grabbed Shino with crushing force.
"Ah...!?"
Shino's whole body went rigid. Her arms and ribs creaked under his grip, and the air was forced out of her lungs.
"...Shin... kawa..."
The pressure and shock left her unable to breathe. Kyoji only tightened his hold, trying to push her down onto the bed with his weight.
"Asada-san... I like you. I love you. My Asada-san... my Sinon."
His hoarse voice cracked. The words filling the room sounded less like a confession than a curse.
"No... don't..."
Shino pressed both hands hard against the mattress, braced her legs, and drove her right shoulder into Kyoji's chest.
"...Don't."
Her voice was small, but she managed to push him back and suck in a ragged breath.
Kyoji stumbled backward, caught his foot on a cushion, and fell onto the floor. The cake box dropped from the table with a dull thud.
He did not even notice it.
He only stared at Shino, stunned, as if he could not believe she had rejected him. His wide eyes went dull, and hollow words slipped from his twitching lips.
"No, Asada-san. No. You can't betray me. I'm the only one who can help you. You can't look at other men."
Kyoji slowly stood again and walked toward her.
"...Shin... Shinkawa-kun..."
Still reeling from the shock, Shino could barely get the words out.
It was true. When she had invited him to her apartment and cooked for him before, and when he had hugged her in the park, she had sensed something dangerous in him, some aggressive impulse. But he was a boy, and she had assumed some of that was normal. Kyoji seemed serious, quiet, almost invisible. She had trusted that he would never lose control and do something unforgivable.
Now he stood silently in front of her as she lay frozen against the bed, looking down at her.
There was a madness in his eyes that Shino had never seen before.
Is Shinkawa-kun going to force himself on me... right here?
Fragments of thought flashed through her mind.
Then another image, even more terrifying, slowly formed.
Except...
Shino's fear had been pointed in the right direction, but it was wrong in one essential way.
Kyoji's mouth hung slightly open as he breathed in short, uneven gasps. He reached into the pocket of his jacket with his right hand and seemed to grip something.
When he pulled his hand back out, he was holding a strange object.
It was made of plastic, about twenty centimeters long, and shone a vivid green. Its front end narrowed into a cone. A handle-like grip slanted out from the roughly three-centimeter cylinder, and Kyoji's right hand closed around it, his index finger resting on a raised green button where the grip met the body.
Only the tip of the cylinder had a silver metal fitting. The slightly pointed end seemed to have a tiny hole in it. From its overall shape, it looked like a child's toy ray gun.
But the plain, undecorated object made Shino understand exactly what it was for.
Kyoji moved the hand holding it and pressed the tip casually against Shino's neck.
The icy touch made every hair on her body stand on end.
"Shin... kawa...?"
Her stiff lips moved, and she finally managed to make a sound.
Before she could finish, Kyoji cut in softly.
"Don't move, Asada-san. Don't make a sound either... This is a needle-free high-pressure injector. It's filled with succinylcholine. If I inject it into your body, your muscles will stop moving, and soon your heart and lungs will stop too."
If the mind had a shell somewhere inside the brain, Shino felt as if the blows she had taken today had cracked straight through it again and again.
She had lost count.
Cold spread from her neck into the tips of her fingers and toes, and her thoughts began to go numb. Even so, she forced herself to gather the scraps of Kyoji's words and understand them.
He was saying he would kill her.
If she did not do what he said, he would inject the drug from that toy-like device into her body and stop her heart.
This had to be a joke.
Shinkawa-kun would never do something like this.
Some part of Shino's mind kept repeating that.
But her mouth felt as dry and rigid as dead wood, unable to move. And at her neck, five centimeters below her left ear, the hard, cold pressure of the metal cone would not let her pretend any of this was a joke.
Shino could only stare at Kyoji's face, darkened by the backlight.
His still-childish, rounded jaw moved slightly, and he spoke without any rhythm at all.
"It's all right, Asada-san. It isn't scary. After this, we'll become one... I'll give you every feeling I've built up since the day we met. I'll inject it very gently... so it won't hurt at all. Don't worry. Leave everything to me."
Shino still could not understand what his words meant.
The sounds were almost Japanese, yet they reached her like a foreign language.
Deep in her ears, only two words kept repeating.
Injector.
Heart.
Her lips twitched in a spasm. Her voice came out hoarse.
"So... you... you're the other Death Gun?"
The injector pressed to her neck trembled.
The admiration Kyoji had always shown when speaking to her vanished from his face. A smile lifted the corners of his mouth.
"...Wow. That's amazing. As expected of you, Asada-san... You figured out Death Gun's secret. That's right. I'm one of Death Gun's hands. Until this BoB tournament, I was the one operating Sterben. If you watched the footage of me shooting XeXeeD in the Glocken tavern, that would make me so happy. But today, I'm in charge of the real-world side. Still, Asada-san, you can't go touching other men. Not even my brother."
For what felt like the hundredth time that day, Shino's body froze in shock.
Kyoji had a brother?
She had never heard him mention that. She knew he had spent a lot of time in hospitals as a child, but he had never said anything beyond that, and Shino had never asked.
"Brother...? The former SAO player who belonged to a murder guild... he's your older brother?"
This time, Kyoji's eyes widened in surprise.
"Wow... you even know that much? Did my brother tell you during the tournament? Did he take an interest in you too, Asada-san? But don't worry. No one is going to touch you. Actually... I wasn't planning to inject you today. My brother will be angry about it, but... Asada-san, in the park, you said you would become mine."
There, Kyoji stopped.
The blissful smile faded from his lips again, and his expression darkened.
"And yet... Asada-san, you went with that man. He tricked you. I don't know what he told you, but I'll surpass him soon. Please forget him."
The injector was still pressed against Shino's neck. Kyoji gripped her right shoulder tightly with his left hand and pushed her down onto the bed, then climbed up and straddled her thighs.
All the while, he kept talking as if he were dreaming.
"...Don't worry. I won't leave you alone, Asada-san. I'll come after you soon. The two of us will be just like we were in GGO... no, we'll be reborn in an even more fantastic world. We'll become husband and wife there and live together. We'll adventure together... have children... It'll be wonderful."
Listening to Kyoji's completely deranged words, Shino managed to reach two conclusions through the numbness in her mind.
The police would be here soon.
She had to keep him talking.
"But... if you're gone, your brother will be in trouble without his partner... And... and I wasn't shot by Death Gun. If I die like this, everyone will start doubting the legend you worked so hard to build."
Her parched tongue finally moved enough to get the words out.
Kyoji slid the injector in his right hand through the collar of her tracksuit and moved it below her collarbone. A twitching smile crossed his face.
"It's fine. We had three targets today."
His voice lowered.
"My brother brought in one more operative. He was a guild member back in SAO too. After this, he can just take my place. And... I won't let you end up like scum such as XeXeeD and Usujio Tarako, Asada-san. You won't be killed by Death Gun."
His smile widened.
"You belong only to me. If I have to send you ahead, I'll find somewhere far away... a forested mountain where no one ever goes, and I'll take you there. Then I'll come after you right away. So please wait for me on the other side."
Kyoji's left hand began to touch Shino's abdomen through her tracksuit, timidly, almost fearfully.
First two or three fingers.
Then his whole palm.