Chapter 3
It's March 2025, and I have started my first year in high school. School work is hard as usual, but I have also been keeping myself busy. I have always been interested in technology and computers, even before SAO, and I have made up my mind to pursue computer engineering as a career. Hence, I have been working extra hard in Maths and Science. I have also taken up Kendo again. Partly because of the constant need to hold a sword, and also because of how hard I have seen Sugu practiced. I could not help but feel guilty that Sugu took up Kendo for my sake. I have also been tinkling around with computer parts on my spare time.
Every morning, the fifteen minute walk from my house to the train station to get to school is the rare quality time that I get to spend with my sister. I always enjoyed every minute of it. The comfortable peacefulness between us, with an effortless flow in conversation, it was a nice piece of tranquillity before the hectic rush of the day. Today, I feel, will be no different.
Just as we left the house, sandwiches in hand as breakfast, Suguha asked, 'Who is Asuna?'
'E-eh?' I stuttered, almost tripping over my own feet.
'I heard you calling her name every night in your sleep as you were having nightmares.'
That's right, every night for the past few months, I have not had a good night's sleep. Always waking up in the middle of the night with nightmares of SAO. The most frequent being seeing Asuna die in front of my very eyes. Those nightmares will always wake me up with tears and sweat streaming down my face. They have also cost me permanent dark eye circles.
'Asuna huh,' I began, 'She's this really beautiful girl that I met in SAO.'
I began recounting a brief summary of Asuna. Our various adventures together, the delicious sandwiches that she made, how we managed to get married in a cottage by the river, about Yui. And of course, the long beautiful chestnut-brown hair of hers, her feisty temper, the swift moves of her sword, and most importantly, her smile.
Recounting all these stories has made me start to cry, but it did not affect me as much as it used to, where I have to be restrained on a chair with those painful memories.
'Ha, since when had I become such a crybaby?' I smiled as I wiped the tears away. But the painful memories of Asuna swam in my head throughout my journey to school, and I resolved to try harder to search for Asuna.
I have searched for her ever since I was free of SAO. Now, online therapy groups and forums of SAO has popped up all over the internet. I joined one of the most popular SAO forum and found many friends there, including Klein, Agil, Lisbeth, Silica and several other players I have helped throughout the game. Since I used back my username, Kirito, I have been bombarded with questions about SAO constantly. So much so that even news station would like to interview me about what happened in SAO. I declined those interviews of course, but to stop the harassment, I released a statement and also wrote an article about what happened in the final level. The attention died down a little after that, to much relief. After all these commotion, there was still no news of Asuna. The entire online community was also more or less looking for information about Asuna, with her being a famous player in SAO itself.
I have not given up on finding Asuna of course, but it was proving to be a difficult quest.