"Medicuboid?"
Hidemura studied Satoru through the haze of cigarette smoke between them.
"Why are you asking about that?"
"So you do know about it?"
Satoru pulled the wastebasket closer, giving them somewhere to tap their ash.
"You can drop the formal tone with me."
Hidemura smiled.
"And yes, I know about the project. It was founded on the idea that the AmuSphere could create a better medical environment. You know what the AmuSphere is better than I do. It's the successor to the NerveGear and the most widespread FullDive console on the market. These days, nearly every VR game uses The Seed you gave me as part of its foundation."
He tapped his cigarette over the wastebasket.
"The Seed isn't merely a game-world editor. It's a seed for VR technology itself. Functions that would normally take teams of engineers to build are already packaged inside it, ready for anyone to use. It's an absurdly brilliant piece of software, almost an all-in-one toolkit for VR development. Even if you never used it to make a game or build an engine, taking it apart for research would still be immensely valuable."
Hidemura paused.
"The Medicuboid needs that kind of accessible VR framework. A virtual world can let someone born blind experience sight. The world may not be real, but the gift certainly is."
"So the Medicuboid really was created as a public-health project?"
"As far as I know."
Hidemura considered the question.
"They even based it on the obsolete NerveGear. After all the scandals involving VRMMOs, the AmuSphere was fitted with layer after layer of safeguards to protect its users. Three or four redundancies, at least. But every safeguard also limits what the machine can do."
He took another drag before continuing.
"Kayaba's original NerveGear sacrificed safety for fidelity. It could reproduce a virtual world with far greater clarity and realism. The Medicuboid team stripped the design down and rebuilt it, added several times as many pulse generators, and made it capable of blocking sensory signals from the entire body. Then they installed a CPU far faster than the one in an AmuSphere. That became the Medicuboid prototype."
"I've heard it could have a remarkable range of medical applications, but that's only hearsay. I'm not an expert."
Hidemura exhaled a thin stream of smoke.
"The project is enormous. The government is leading it now, and a lot of interests are tied up in it. It's been running for years, but there still hasn't been any public breakthrough. I imagine they've hit more than a few technical walls. Medicine is complicated. So is the human body."
"The government is running it?"
"Yes. The person who handled the contract with me came from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications."
"The ministry..."
Satoru thought for a moment.
"When was the project established?"
"A long time ago. I couldn't give you the exact year, but it was around the same time as SAO. The SAO Incident swallowed every headline back then, so everything from that period blurs together in my memory."
Satoru's eyes widened.
"Around the same time? Shouldn't it have been either earlier or later? They bought the rights to use The Seed from Kurosaki Enterprises, but The Seed didn't reach the public until almost two or three years after SAO began."
"They did buy the rights, but the project itself had already existed for quite some time."
"Then almost as soon as Kayaba demonstrated that FullDive VR was viable, someone launched a major medical VR project?"
"More or less."
Satoru shook his head.
"That's too fast. The judgment, the response, everything."
"Never underestimate people with good instincts," Hidemura said. "I see it all the time in business. Someone creates a new trend, but that doesn't mean he'll be the one who profits most from it. Within a day or two, competitors with sharper judgment will copy what works and flood into the market. They're followers, yes, but frighteningly perceptive ones. Technology isn't exactly the same, but the principle holds. Some people recognize an opportunity almost immediately."
"What happened to the project after that? Something this important should have left a trail, but I found very little online."
"I don't know much myself. The media covered it two or three years ago, while you and Saki were still trapped in SAO, so naturally, you never saw it. The coverage started out glowing, then interest faded until the project disappeared from public view. Much later, someone from the ministry came to purchase The Seed from me, which proves the work was still going on. But even now, there have been no further reports. I sold them the software, and even I have no idea how far they've gotten."
Hidemura frowned.
"There shouldn't be any reason for that much secrecy."
"Maybe the project was shelved."
"What do you mean?"
"The SAO Incident could have turned public opinion against it. They may have suspended the research, then revived it once FullDive technology became accepted again."
"That would explain why its history feels so disjointed," Hidemura admitted.
"Then the people who started it and the people who restarted it may not have been the same."
Satoru lowered his voice.
"Uncle Kurosaki, do you remember who announced the original project?"
"I think it was a joint effort between the University of Tokyo and several affiliated hospitals. I don't remember anything more specific. With Saki trapped in SAO, I was too worried and miserable to pay much attention. The old articles should still be online."
"I found them. They don't say much more than you just did. So at the very least, the project wasn't drafted by the government?"
"I can't say that for certain, but how would a room full of bureaucrats design something in a field that specialized?"
Hidemura shrugged.
Satoru fell silent. His first cigarette had burned down, so he lit another.
Maybe it was his imagination, but ever since gaining a Fluctlight, he had relied on cigarettes more heavily.
Hidemura watched him take the first drag.
"Satoru, you really should cut back."
"Right. I will."
"Take care of yourself. And when you get married and start thinking about children, quit for a while. Cut back on alcohol too. You'll want the baby to be healthy. I gave up both when my wife and I were trying for Saki, and looking at my little angel now, I know it was the right decision. A father's responsibilities begin before his child is even born."
The advice was sincere, but a faint grievance lingered beneath every word. Hidemura looked like a farmer who had just caught a stray boar rooting through the prize cabbage patch he had spent years tending.
"I-I understand," Satoru said, having no idea how else to respond.
"Good. Now give me another cigarette."
Satoru stared at him.
"Didn't you just say we should cut back?"
"I'm smoking to ease my sorrow. You'll understand one day. You in particular..."
Hidemura's voice turned mournful.
"Wait until you've raised a perfect cabbage with your own blood and sweat."
What did any of this have to do with cabbage?
Hidemura had been saying strange things all day. Satoru decided it was better not to ask and handed him another Yunyan instead, lighting it for him.
Hidemura settled the cigarette between his lips with practiced ease.
"That's everything I know about the Medicuboid. Although... now that I think about it, the original news coverage focused on one person in particular."
"Who?"
"Rinko Koujiro."
Satoru went rigid.
Hidemura continued without noticing.
"The reports said she worked in the same laboratory as Kayaba and was his junior there. That's why the name stuck with me. The articles praised them to the heavens, saying the two researchers inspired each other as they explored the possibilities of VR."
"Rinko... Koujiro."
Satoru bit down on his cigarette filter and pressed a hand to his forehead. A dim pale-gold light stirred in his lowered eyes.
That name was a loose thread.
At last, he had something he could follow back through the tangled mass of his memories, tracing it upstream toward the source.
Heat began to build inside his skull as fragments of old scenes flashed before him.
He saw himself asking a short-haired woman in a white lab coat for help. Every strand of hair over her forehead was so clear that he felt he could count them. Then came a ramen shop and a conversation across the table, down to the grain of the sliced pork floating in the oily broth.
Not enough.
No, that wasn't it.
He needed to go farther back, to the exact moment when the name Rinko Koujiro had first been carved into his memory.
A coffee shop. Half a cup of black coffee trembled gently on the table. Bright sunlight poured through the window to his right. Winter had not quite ended, but soon the cherry trees would bloom.
"Do you like coffee?"
"I don't hate it."
The conversation returned with startling clarity, as if time itself were replaying it inside his head.
"Her identity was made public, actually. She was even commended for her cooperation."
"She?"
"Rinko Koujiro. She attended the same university as Kayaba, was his junior there, and later became his colleague. Academically, she may have been his equal. Her early cooperation allowed us to use Argus's servers to monitor SAO more closely. By the time you reached the Seventieth Floor, her analysis of SAO was nearly complete. Even if you hadn't defeated Kayaba, we probably would have been able to force a rescue from the outside."
There.
That was the moment Rinko Koujiro had entered his world.
Pale gold flashed in Satoru's eyes.
There was more.
He remembered the phone call after the ALO Incident too.
"Rinko Koujiro has left Japan. She's studying at a university in the United States now."
"I see..."
"That's right. So you won't be able to go knocking on her door whenever you please anymore."
Except he had found her.
He had even contacted her.
Then the rest of the conversation returned. The words had been spoken long ago, but in his memory, they now carried the weight of a warning.
"That's far enough, Suzuki-kun. Sometimes... being too perceptive is not a good thing."
It was only an echo of his own memory, yet it felt as though the man were standing there and warning him again.
So that was it.
A hard smile touched Satoru's face.
"Do you think good people always get rewarded?" the man had asked over the phone.
The pale gold faded from Satoru's eyes. He rose and looked out the window, quietly repeating the answer he had given that day to someone who was not there.
"Then do you think bad people always do?"
He ground his cigarette into the bottom of the wastebasket.
"Leaving already?" Hidemura asked. "If you stay a little longer, I can call Saki and the three of us can have dinner."
"Next time."
Satoru turned and gave him a small smile.
"There's something I need to do."
After saying goodbye, Satoru stepped into the empty corridor and walked on alone. With each measured step, pale gold surfaced in his eyes once more.
Those eyes missed nothing. Every detail, every lie, had been recorded faithfully, waiting for him to look back and reconsider what he had seen.
In 2022, Sword Art Online went live, and Kayaba began pursuing his dream of a floating castle. At nearly the same time, his colleague Rinko Koujiro began developing medical applications for FullDive technology.
Then the SAO Incident began, and Rinko's project collapsed beneath the public terror surrounding VR.
That was only a reconstruction made in hindsight, but it felt dangerously close to the truth.
Rinko had assisted Kayaba throughout SAO's two-year existence. At the same time, however, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications had already set its sights on her.
Or perhaps Kikuoka had.
Using Kayaba as leverage, Kikuoka took the Medicuboid research from her. When Aincrad fell and he had what he wanted, he kept his end of the bargain: Rinko's role as Kayaba's accomplice was quietly erased, and she was sent to California in all but name as an exile.
She had been helping two sides at once.
No, three, if Satoru counted himself.
The pale gold in his eyes intensified.
Now the project had been revived. But was public health truly its only purpose?
Kikuoka was the thief picking through the ruins of Kayaba's floating castle, the strategist who had put SAO's legacy to use more completely than anyone else.
What was he planning now?
What had he seen without the benefit of a Fluctlight Eye?
No.
It had nothing to do with Satoru.
But today, after circling all the way back to the beginning, he had finally found an opening.
He would tear Rinko's whereabouts out of Kikuoka. Rip open his chest, pull out his organs, break apart his bones, crack open his skull and lick the brain matter from within. Whatever it took, Satoru would get the information he wanted.
His eyes flashed, and the pale gold vanished at once. The Fluctlight that had once defied him had become an obedient servant, rising and retreating at his command.
Satoru took out his phone and opened his messages. One had arrived in the early hours of the previous morning.
It contained a single English word.
Medicuboid.
So he was not fighting alone after all.
His smile held no warmth as he passed two businessmen coming the other way. Hidemura was probably fitting in a few more meetings while he still had time.
The middle-aged men exchanged glances, then looked back at Satoru's retreating figure.
"That kid's eyes were terrifying," one muttered. "Like somebody had just stolen a wolf's dinner."