The Twilight Marauder by Reki Kawahara
Replying with a slight nod, Haruyuki turned his attention back to the tournament area.
“Ehaaah!”
“Sheeeh!”
Two small team members were clashing wooden shinai swords together. From their shrill fervor and the green ribbons on their gear, Haruyuki assumed they were both new seventh graders.
Today was the full-participation tournament for the Umesato Junior High School kendo team. The point was to decide who would be on the regular and reserve teams, but it also apparently served the dual purpose of beating the authority of the seniors into the freshmen. Umesato’s kendo team was fairly strong, maybe because the school had a specialized dojo, and ten or so new students had joined the team again this year. Of these, the only one in eighth grade was Takumu.
Although Takumu himself had intended to dedicate all his free time to Nega Nebulus after transferring to Umesato at the beginning of the year, Kuroyukihime had strongly urged him not to. When his beloved “master” told him not to make everything in his real life about Brain Burst, Takumu found inside himself the desire to continue the kendo he had been doing for so long, and he was finally able to try out for the team this spring.
Haruyuki interpreted Takumu inviting him and Chiyuri to the tournament as being a sign of his intention not to use acceleration again in kendo, even if it meant he lost. Thus, Haruyuki had brought himself to the domain of the sports teams, which, to be honest, made him nervous.
“Doh! Win!” the advising teacher called out, interrupting Haruyuki’s thoughts.
One of the seventh graders, back at the start line putting his shinai away, returned to the line of team members while stomping with a frustration he couldn’t quite fully hide. In contrast, the winning student turned a remarkably small body deftly aside and stepped silently from the tournament area.
Haruyuki narrowed his eyes contemplatively and followed the winner’s back, but the teacher’s voice yanked him back. “Second match, round one! Red, Takagi. White, Mayuzumi!”
Two students immediately stood up. Takagi was a ninth grader and Mayuzumi—Takumu—was of course a year below. Both were about the same height, with Takagi having the meatier physique. They took three steps from the tournament sign and crouched at the start line. Haruyuki stared at Takumu, who held his shinai perfectly steady at mid-level.
Now that he was thinking about it, this was actually the first time he had seen Takumu in his kendo gear in the flesh. Naturally, he had watched tournament videos uploaded to the net before, but obviously, the amount of information you got with the real thing was different. He could practically feel the weight of Takumu’s blackly lustrous shinai sword, shiny from use, and the stiffness of his kendo uniform. The scent of his protective gear wafted through the air toward him, and he swallowed hard.
Otherwise unchanged for more than a hundred years, the only thing glittering unusually on this kendo practitioner’s outfit was the Neurolinker just peeking out from under the mask padding.
It hadn’t actually been that long since matches in all kinds of sports had started to be carried out with Neurolinkers equipped. The main purpose was to have a visual overlay display of points earned and match time, but in kendo and fencing in particular, it was also used to judge blows. With the Neurolinker’s sensation feedback function, it was easy to judge the beginning and end of a blow, which not uncommonly differed by a few hundredths of a second.
Of course, players were strictly checked for the use of external applications or connections to the global net during matches. But there was one super program that could easily make it past this monitoring. It went without saying that this program was Brain Burst.
Takumu had used the acceleration function at the Tokyo Junior High Kendo Tournament the previous summer and won the championship while he was still in seventh grade. But he consumed too many Burst points in doing so, and he was faced with the threat of losing Brain Burst. Driven into that corner, he infected Chiyuri’s Neurolinker with a virus and tried to steal all of Kuroyukihime’s—Black Lotus’s—points.
Takumu still deeply regretted those actions, even now when Chiyuri and Kuroyukihime had both forgiven him. But Haruyuki felt that by coming back to the kendo arena again like this, Takumu was finally trying to make a new start.
“Takuuuu! Take him down!!” Chiyuri let loose next to him with a loud cheer, and even as he hid reflexively, Haruyuki shouted for everything he was worth.
“T-Taku! Go!!”
Against the ninth grade So-and-so Takagi, Takumu won handily, despite missing one blow. And he managed another sweeping victory in the quarterfinals. He secured a win in the semifinals as well, through a verdict, and finally advanced his chess piece to the finals.
However, it wasn’t Takumu who was the talk of the tournament, but rather the new seventh grader, who had won all matches with surprising strength, taking each opponent in two blows.
“K-kote! Win!!” The slightly high-pitched voice of the teacher/coach was overpowered by the sudden clamor. The rumor of the “amazing seventh grader” had spread instantly via the local net, and in a mere ten minutes, the area around the tournament space was jammed with students, even with the fact that school was out.
Said seventh grader, smoothly returning to the start line and not appearing to pay any mind at all to the commotion, was the small player from the first match Haruyuki saw. The name embroidered on the number bib read NOMI.
Erring on the side of generosity, Nomi was probably about 155 centimeters tall. His physique was on the slender side and as he faced his older, larger opponent, it seemed like the match would be something more akin to an adult fighting a child and very unlikely to be a proper match.
But he didn’t get hit. He lightly dodged blows of his ninth grade opponent—blows so fast Haruyuki had trouble seeing them—as if he had predicted their arrival. Or else he met these blows with his own sword when they were still in their infancy.
According to Haruyuki’s fuzzy understanding of the sport, kendo was a contest in which you couldn’t really land a point-receiving blow unless you struck when your opponent had yet to begin to strike or had just launched a blow. The former was called saki no saki—or first of the first—while the latter was ato no saki: first of the last; i.e., the crux of the matter was how fast you could react to your enemy’s attack.
On this point, the seventh grader Nomi seemed to have an ability far greater than anyone around him.
Right: ability.
“Final match!! Red, Nomi! White, Mayuzumi!”
At the voice of their teacher/coach, Nomi and Takumu stepped into the tournament space. The cheers from the gallery grew even louder.
There was about a twenty-centimeter height difference between Takumu, who was fairly tall for a junior high student, and Nomi, who looked like he was still in elementary school. You didn’t have to think too hard to see that Takumu had the advantage. The two had completely different reaches. But Nomi had won all his previous bouts against opponents larger than himself, and without giving up a single point.
Both players bowed their heads and crouched at the start line, shinai in position. The large gallery, sensing something perhaps, abruptly fell silent. Haruyuki felt like he could practically see the pale sparks crackling between the swords as the pair faced off.
“Hajime!!”
The sharp cry was barely out of the teacher’s mouth when the sounds of two shouts and one blow tangled together in the kendo arena.
The first to move was Takumu, or so it looked to Haruyuki. As he stood, he moved forward and struck with the strong kiai cry of “Meeeeen!” A single, merciless blow aimed straight at his opponent’s men mask from as far as he could manage. With his short reach, Nomi shouldn’t have been able to meet this strike.
However, before Takumu’s shinai could meet its target, Nomi shouted, “Teeeh!” and his shinai hit Takumu’s left kote gauntlet. The slapping sound of the strike shook the air. Takumu started to chase Nomi and lock swords, but Nomi had already created plenty
“Kote hit!”
The raising of a red flag accompanied the shout, and the gallery, together with the more than thirty team members, finally began to chatter noisily.
Standing next to Haruyuki, Chiyuri opened her eyes wide and shouted. “No waaay!”
Haruyuki also felt like that was the only thing anyone could say. Because Takumu had moved first, he was sure of it. And he had aimed for the mask of an opponent who had been just barely within his own reach. How could he have gotten hit on the gauntlet in the middle of that strike?
In other words, Nomi had perfectly grasped the trajectory and timing of Takumu’s strike and brought his own shinai up first—which made absolutely no sense. It wasn’t the first of saki no saki or the last of ato no saki. If Haruyuki was forced to choose, he would say it was naka no saki—the middle of the first.
Forgetting to blink, he momentarily doubted the reality of the world and wondered if he wasn’t actually in some virtual one.
If it was a virtual world—if it was an electronic world where everything was decided by the brain’s reaction speed—then Nomi’s counter might have been possible. But movement in the real world was constrained by several physical laws. Taking into consideration things like the inertia of a heavy body, the transmission speed of nerves, and the contraction speed of muscles, swinging your sword before seeing your opponent’s strike was completely and utterly impossible.
Unless you were one of the select few possessing a certain “ability.”
Haruyuki felt sweat coating the hands he had clenched tightly into fists as he stared once again at the pair facing off at the starting line.
“Second round!”
This time, the scene developed in the exact opposite way. Takumu maintained his distance, shinai held at the ready. His eyes behind the cage of the mask were sharp like a sword, his lips pressed firmly together.
Nomi, on the other hand, didn’t seem even vaguely tense as the tip of his sword bobbed lightly up and down. He was backlit, so Haruyuki couldn’t see his face, but he could see the faint smile etched out on the lips.
Ten seconds. Twenty seconds.
Time alone passed, neither side reaching out.
Haruyuki opened both eyes wide and focused every nerve in his body on Nomi’s face. If his guess—bad feeling—was correct, Nomi would move his mouth ever so slightly at some point. To give a short voice command at a volume no one could hear.
The ticking clock hands were the only things that moved as the teacher/coach finally took a deep breath, on the verge of calling out “stop.”
But in that instant, Nomi raised his shinai at a speed that could hardly be called fast. And then Haruyuki finally saw it: Nomi’s mouth quickly opening and closing in a tight circle.
No mistake. The acceleration command.
This new seventh grader Nomi was a Burst Linker, possessing the mysterious super-app Brain Burst in the Neurolinker around his neck.
“Dooooh!” Takumu attacked Nomi’s unguarded chest the instant he raised his shinai.
Haruyuki also verbally called out, “Burst Link!”
The world froze blue with a screech.
His perception now accelerated a thousand times, Haruyuki watched Takumu’s shinai inch toward Nomi’s torso. Nomi could do whatever he wanted, but he wouldn’t be able to evade or defend against this blow now. Even if he were also accelerating at that moment.
Wearing his pink pig avatar, Haruyuki slipped into the tournament space and peeked into the cage of Nomi’s mask, semitransparent and blue. Unfortunately, what was beyond the mask was apparently outside the range of the social cameras, and he couldn’t see through to Nomi’s bare face. Just the mouth cracking a grin was re-created with polygons.
As he stared intently at the shrouded face, Haruyuki launched the Brain Burst console with his left hand. He wasn’t clear on how exactly this freshman had managed to slip through the checks he and Kuroyukihime had done immediately after the entrance ceremony. But he had to be connected to the Umesato local net right now, given that he was in the middle of a tournament. And in that case, the full name of this Nomi would have to appear in the matching list.
I’ll challenge him to a duel right now, Haruyuki resolved in his heart, and waited for the list to refresh.
Nomi was clearly using the acceleration ability in this kendo team tournament. Which meant he was probably planning to use it in the proficiency tests at the beginning of next week. So Haruyuki would have to teach him—with his virtual fists, if necessary—that Nega Nebulus had an ironclad rule that Burst Linkers at Umesato Junior High were not to use acceleration in tests or tournaments.
The searching display ended, and the names Silver Crow, Black Lotus, Cyan Pile, and Lime Bell were displayed, pop, pop, pop, on the list.
“What…?!” Haruyuki gasped violently, right hand still reaching out to the list.
His name’s not here. Just like the other day, there’re only the four Burst Linkers we already know about!
“H-how…,” he muttered, stunned.
He couldn’t believe that it had been his imagination. Takumu had almost certainly launched his first strike without waiting and watching, precisely because he thought this Nomi was a Burst Linker, and he hadn’t wanted to give Nomi the chance to call out the acceleration command.
After toying with the thought that maybe, impossibly, the backdoor program Takumu had used six months earlier was going around again, he quickly tossed the idea aside. That program was to connect from outside a closed network, using someone as a stepladder. However, at that moment, Nomi was clearly in the Umesato Junior High kendo area. And that meant that he had to be connected to the in-school local net. So he had to be registered on the matching list, he absolutely had to.
Haruyuki crossed his short pig avatar arms, dropped his head, and seriously racked his brain. He needed a full minute to organize the up-to-three possibilities that could explain this situation.
One: Nomi was not a Burst Linker, but instead, a kendo genius.
Two: Nomi was a Burst Linker, but he was not connected to the in-school local net.
Three: Nomi was a Burst Linker and he was connected to the local net, but he could refuse to be registered on the matching list.
One of these had to be the truth. But whichever one it ended up being, there was still something that couldn’t be explained.
Haruyuki exhaled at length, with frustration and a foreboding he couldn’t quite pinpoint. But it was useless to keep thinking about it now. All he could do was talk with Takumu and the others about it later.
He returned to his own frozen blue body and stared once more at Nomi.
Perhaps recklessly aiming for Takumu’s men mask, he was leaping forward, his shinai sword raised high. Takumu’s timing in going for the blow on the exposed doh stomach was perfect to Haruyuki’s layperson eyes.
If, hypothetically, Nomi happened to be a Burst Linker or a kendo genius or even both, there was nothing he could do about it at that moment. Deciding to at least properly witness with his own eyeballs Takumu taking a point, Haruyuki shouted the acceleration stop command, eyes wide open.
“Burst out!”
From off in the distance, the sound of the real world approached, while the blue world gradually regained its color. Takumu’s and Nomi’s movements steadily, bit by bit, returned to their original speed—
“……?!” Haruyuki was slapped in the face with a new shock for the nth time in these last few minutes.
Nomi’s body had slid to the right.
It wasn’t anything approaching footwork. Only the tiptoes of his left foot were in contact with the tournament floor. And yet, with this single point as an axis, the little body rotated left, like a figure skater, and slid to the right. Takumu’s shinai gave chase, but the torso fled, escaped…
Which is where the acceleration of Haruyuki’s senses was completely released.
The saki-gawa tip of Takumu’s
Then Nomi’s casually deployed shinai caught Takumu’s mask cage spectacularly. As he followed through, he stomped the floor hard with his right foot.
“Meeeen!!” A faultless counterstroke accompanied the kiai cry.
The kendo area fell back into silence until there finally came the cry of, “Men! Hit! We have a winner!!”
Fwump. The bag containing Haruyuki’s jacket fell from his hand.
5
Unable to rank the priority of the things he needed to be investigating, Haruyuki stared for a while at the small shrimp. It sat on top of the pizza slice he held in his hand.
Making up his mind, he took a big bite, raised his head, and asked, “Taku. He…Is Nomi a Burst Linker?”
“Wow, you cut straight to the chase, huh?” Takumu raised the right side of his mouth in a wry smile and bit into his own slice.
Eight thirty at night, Haruyuki’s bedroom. Takumu had finished his team practice and taken a shower at his own place before coming over, so it had gotten a bit late.
As a rule, Haruyuki’s mother didn’t come home before midnight, and in his elementary school days, Takumu knew his parents would never have allowed him to eat supper at a friend’s house like this. Takumu had also fought battle after war with his parents about the transfer to Umesato at the beginning of the year, although he had stubbornly refused to tell them why he wanted the transfer.
In the end, he had finally managed to get them to allow it by voluntarily offering several conditions, but naturally, Haruyuki didn’t know all the details of that deal. And although he bowed his head to all the struggle Takumu had gone through, he also selfishly wondered which way worked out better for a kid: Takumu’s life or his own, with parents who paid him absolutely no attention.
“Oh! You’re eating stuff like that again?!” Haruyuki had just taken his second bite when a voice suddenly shattered his thoughts.