Rain hammered against the windows. Heavy drops burst across the glass, only for the next sheet of water to wash them away and the cold wind to drag their remains down the pane.
Beyond the athletic field and assembly platform, everything had vanished beneath the storm. The rain came down without pause, as though some distant ocean had been overturned above the campus. Winter winds had begun howling that afternoon, followed by black clouds and thunder. Any student or teacher with an ounce of sense had left long ago.
The classroom and research buildings stood empty. Only their concrete shells remained, holding firm against the storm like reefs against the sea. Sections of artificial turf had already peeled away from the field, while the drains along the walkways gurgled and strained against more water than they could swallow.
Evening had surrendered the entire campus to the rain. Thunder shook the sky, and every flash of lightning burned the world white for a heartbeat before plunging it back into darkness. The soaked buildings looked less like a university than a castle from an old horror film.
The guardhouse at the main gate was the only place still showing any sign of life. Its light flickered in the darkness like a tiny boat on a black sea, always one wave away from being swallowed.
The guards had no choice but to remain on duty. They huddled inside the cramped booth with cigarettes and tablets, complaining whenever the videos on their screens froze to buffer. The downpour seemed strong enough to interfere with the network itself.
They were certain no thief would bother with the campus in weather like this. Anyone foolish enough to try would slip face-first into a puddle before reaching the gate.
Unfortunately, the same flooded roads kept the guards from going home. It looked as though they would be spending the night there.
Their only real concern was a leak. With the rain pounding the walls like a barrage of rubber bullets, the little booth felt like a fortress under siege.
As long as the roof held until morning, they would be fine. The guards kept staring at another frozen loading icon.
They were not, however, the last people on campus.
Someone else remained inside the research building at Toho Technological University.
Eiji Nochizawa stood beside a window, both hands buried in his coat pockets as he watched the chaos outside. A high fleece collar protected his neck, while loose trousers and hiking boots covered the rest of him. Apart from his head, every inch of his body was sealed away as neatly as a soldier inside his armor.
"It's cold."
The words barely left his lips.
The doors and windows were shut tight, and the thick concrete walls kept the storm outside. Dressed as warmly as he was, Eiji should not have felt cold at all.
He had been standing there for half an hour. He had noticed the signs of a storm that afternoon, and the weather report had warned everyone what was coming.
Still, he had chosen not to leave.
He simply remained in the laboratory, staring into the black rain.
Watching nature tear itself apart from the safety of a warm room might have been relaxing for someone else. There was shelter, hot instant coffee, and the quiet assurance that the storm could not reach him. The guards at the gate would probably have envied him.
But Eiji's face remained numb.
To him, the wind and rain were an army clashing with blades and spears. The laboratory was only a spectator's seat inside a safe zone, a shell where he could cower and watch disaster from a distance.
He feared that shelter.
He hated it too.
A safe zone was merely a nicer name for a prison built for the weak.
Everywhere was the same.
His brow tightened as the song in his headphones looped again. It was barely a minute long, a reconstruction he had commissioned from a music studio using nothing but his memories. He had forced himself to recall every note he could.
The result was never right.
That was the cruelty of memory. It blurred even as it cut deeper into the heart. You could feel as though you remembered everything while the details slipped away one by one, until only the strongest emotion and a single image remained.
The song tried to guide him back, but reality and memory refused to overlap. There were gaps everywhere.
A pale girl in blue and white played her small lute beneath the sunlight. White doves circled overhead as she sang, her voice light and clear, her smile bright enough to ease any pain.
An angel.
Yet the image brought Eiji nothing but humiliation, regret, and grief.
The imitation playing through his headphones could not touch that memory. It offered no comfort at all.
Eiji tore the headphones off and threw open the window.
Wind and rain exploded into the laboratory. His face was soaked at once, and his hair whipped backward as he hurled the headphones into the storm. The flimsy cable twisted in the winter wind and disappeared into the darkness.
He did not close the window.
Instead, Eiji spread his arms and embraced the freezing rain. Water darkened the front of his coat while he shouted into the gale, his voice swallowed whole by the wind.
The neatly arranged papers on the desks scattered through the room. This window was the only breach in the entire building, and the storm rushed through it like an army that had spent hours waiting for the walls to crack.
Within half a minute, Eiji was soaked to the skin. Even the wind could no longer lift the hair plastered across his forehead.
He shouted again and tasted ice-cold rain.
The quiet young man looked like someone half-drowned and desperate to break free.
Somehow, he liked the feeling.
Lightning flashed, flooding the laboratory with white. Thunder followed like drums behind the advancing storm.
"It's cold!"
This time, he screamed the words.
His own body was a prison. The laboratory was a prison. Even the storm outside was only a larger prison waiting beyond it.
His heart was locked away too.
Perhaps only one person had ever possessed the key. Now she existed only in his memories, and those memories were slowly wearing away.
But this time, Eiji was not afraid.
An army could wait outside. A storm of swords and spears could rise against him. None of it would stop him, and none of it would drive him back.
White light filled the laboratory again.
This time, it did not come from lightning. The overhead lights had been switched on, bright but tame, without any of the storm's violence.
"What are you doing? Close the window."
A middle-aged man stood near the door, his right hand still beside the light switch. In his left, he held a dripping black umbrella. A thick white winter coat covered him, but beads of water still clung to his shoulders and the ends of his hair. He had clearly been outside.
Eiji obeyed at once. He shut the window and lowered his head, deliberately avoiding the man's eyes.
"Professor."
"Wipe the water off your face."
The professor frowned as he entered, leaving wet boot prints across the floor.
"Professor," Eiji repeated, too anxious to care how miserable he looked. "Can we begin...?"
"You are familiar with the exosuit by now, aren't you?"
The professor walked to his computer and turned it on without hurry.
"Of course."
Eiji answered immediately, though it was a lie.
The equipment weighed more than ten pounds and enclosed his limbs and joints. Worse than the weight was the way it seized control of every movement, forcing his body to follow its crude speed and power. No matter how hard he trained, he could not quite keep up. He had strained his muscles more than twenty times already, and bruises covered his body.
He could not admit that.
Besides, he was certain he could master it. If he treated his own body like a puppet, sooner or later he would learn to move with the machine.
"Good."
The professor gave a single nod.
Eiji waited, then asked again in a quieter voice.
"Professor... can we start?"
"The core programming is complete. The virus that extracts and stores the data is ready. All that remains is loading it onto the Augma and distributing it through the next software update."
His tone remained calm.
"The file is rather large, so we need a plausible reason for the update. On the surface, it will be a functional virtual pet. That should make users more willing to install it."
He glanced toward Eiji.
"The model I assigned you should be finished as well."
"Of course. Of course."
Eiji hurried to the desk without even drying himself. He picked up a USB drive and offered it to the professor.
The professor took it without looking and placed it beside the keyboard. Rather than opening the file, he continued organizing the virus code.
"Is that really enough?" Eiji asked.
The code on the screen did not look especially complicated. Even he could understand parts of it, which only made him more uneasy.
"The Augma and NerveGear share one crucial function: both can access the human brain. That function is the foundation of FullDive. It separates the brain from the body's sensory input, then replaces signals from the optic and auditory nerves with digital data."
The professor's voice never changed.
"Without it, true virtual reality would be impossible. Kayaba and I were the ones who solved that problem. I know every critical element of the technology."
He turned back to the screen.
"This virus merely exploits a function that already exists. It does not need to be complicated."
"I have spent my position, my connections, my reputation, and every resource at my disposal on the Augma's launch. I approached major corporations and government agencies. The device already has the advantage it needs."
Eiji fell silent.
He understood. Their plan required them to obtain information indirectly. VR was everywhere now, but after one disaster after another, its security protections had become almost airtight. AR offered a safer appearance, a higher adoption rate, and a much wider net.
This was not some desperate idea the professor had devised overnight. He had spent years researching AR. It was the path he had chosen for himself after parting ways with Kayaba, the goal meant to define the rest of his life.
Now he was willing to sacrifice it like a pawn.
He had poured everything he possessed into this plan. There was no road back. After tonight, his reputation would be destroyed. All that remained was to wait for the authorities to arrive with a list of charges.
"Ordinal Scale is performing well," the professor said with a quiet sneer. "It seems people are willing to accept this sort of thing."
His eyes returned to the code.
"It looks safer than Sword Art Online. After all, no one has to surrender control of their body."
He paused.
"Your hunt can begin as well. Start small and test the waters. Consider it a trial run for the program."
"Understood," Eiji replied.
"Then there is your partner."
The words caught Eiji completely off guard.
The professor turned toward the door with his hands clasped behind his back. Only then did Eiji notice that it had never been fully closed.
"Come in."
The door opened slowly.
For a moment, Eiji imagined that a cold draft had pushed it open instead of a human hand.
The hallway beyond was dark. Somewhere inside the shadows, a tiny ember pulsed like a breath.
A man stepped into the laboratory at an unhurried pace. The ember belonged to the half-finished cigarette between his fingers.
He was dressed entirely in black. A dark trench coat fell to his knees, and black trousers disappeared into waterproof boots. In the unlit corridor, he had blended almost perfectly into the shadows.
Fine beads of rain clung to his shoulders and pale forehead. A folded umbrella rested in his other hand, while the fingers exposed to the cold had lost nearly all their color.
Eiji stared at his silent face.
He felt as though he had seen the man somewhere before, but the memory would not settle.
"My partner, Professor?"
"Compared to a useless failure like you, he is the one who deserves to be called an executioner," the professor replied coldly. "Don't you recognize him? You might even call him your benefactor."
Eiji looked away beneath the professor's contemptuous gaze.
"I don't remember him."
"You cannot even remember the man who set you free? You truly were nothing more than a background extra at the bottom of that world."
The professor's voice sharpened.
"If you cannot recognize him, how am I supposed to trust you with the hunt? Will you pour all that effort into the wrong target?"
Set him free...?
No one had ever rescued Eiji personally.
He had never rescued anyone either.
Then something clicked.
He studied the silent man again, and the somber features finally connected with an old name.
"Yurnero?"
His eyes widened.
Every survivor of Sword Art Online had heard that name. Yurnero was the hero who had freed more than six thousand people, the man who had defeated Kayaba behind the guise of Heathcliff and ended the death game on the Seventy-Fifth Floor.
"Satoru," the man corrected him without expression. "Yurnero was only my avatar name."
Why was he here?
Eiji watched him with open suspicion.
"Now you recognize each other. That is enough," the professor said. "I doubt you have anything worth reminiscing about."
He had already finished organizing the data and importing Eiji's model. But the moment it appeared on the screen, his brow tightened. A carefully suppressed emotion flickered behind his eyes.
He glanced at Eiji, who remained standing with his head lowered in deference.
In the end, the professor said nothing.
He handed them two ring-shaped devices.
"Put on the Augma. Let us see the prototype."
Eiji drew a deep breath and accepted one with barely contained excitement.
Satoru glanced at him, dropped his cigarette, and walked over to take the other.
"Smoking is forbidden in the laboratory," the professor said, looking at the discarded cigarette.
"Right."
Satoru put on the device.
The brief dizziness of connection passed. White light flickered at the edge of Eiji's vision as small windows opened one after another, displaying schedules, weather reports, and other information.
Then Eiji looked toward a workbench across the room.
A girl was sitting there where no one had been before. Her slender body was wrapped in a futuristic black-and-purple dress, with black leggings emphasizing legs as delicate as a fairy's. She opened her eyes, revealing an unusual shade of red, and smiled at him.
"Hello, Eiji."
That clear voice and familiar face sent another sharp pain through his chest.
Even so, Eiji smiled back.
"Hello, Yuna."
The girl said nothing more. She merely grinned and tilted her head, the vacant cheerfulness immediately at odds with the person she resembled.
That was only natural.
The AI had just been installed. Its reasoning and processing were still at the most basic level, barely enough to produce a greeting. Its database held nothing.
It was a lifelike human shell without a soul.
The professor stood with his hands behind his back. He neither spoke nor looked at the beautiful girl. His expression remained utterly cold.
Satoru kept both hands in his pockets. His face revealed nothing, but something complicated stirred behind his eyes.
Rain continued to hammer the building while wind and thunder roared at each other outside. Beneath the black sky, silence settled over the lonely laboratory.
The tenderness on Eiji's face slowly disappeared. When he looked at the girl again, his expression had turned cold.
Satoru had remained impassive from the moment he entered.
Now a faint, dangerous smile appeared on his pale face.
The two men had come here in pursuit of strangely similar things. On the same rain-soaked night, both chose to descend into darkness.
Whatever they had once been, admired or forgotten, strong or cowardly, no longer mattered.
Both had become dark knights, each devoted to one person alone.
...
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