Everyone in class spent the whole day talking about the 'Battle of the Guilds' even though Mr. Mills was trying to do some actual teaching. Everyone was too excited about participating in the tournament. Kazuto ignored most of the talk like usual. Although one part of the conversation did catch his attention.
"Since our class has 31 students and 2 of them do not play SAO I will recruit a few others to join so we can reach 36. Counting me we will be at 30 total."
Then Rika had raised her hand. "What about asking Kirito and Snow Princess? You are friends with them right?"
Kazuto's head shot up too late to see Rika winking at Asuna. He knew he was going to get roped into this by Snow Princess just like she dragged him into a party a few days earlier. "I will ask Kirito next time he comes into the store."
After class ended Kazuto went home and logged in to hurry and get to the store first for the day so he could turn down the invitation to the Battle of the Guilds. Unfortunately as he walked through the door a certain girl with long white hair was already there. "Kirito! Guess what! Agil invited us to be on his Battle of the Guilds team. You should join us."
Kirito knew there was no getting out of it. "I don't have anything else going on. How many people do you have?" he directed the last part toward Agil.
"With you two it puts me at 32 people. I need another 4."
"I might have someone I know who could help with that."
Kirito opened up his friend list and sent out a message to one of the other people on his list and got a response immediately. "I just got you 4 more people for your team."
"Really?! Who?" At that moment a red haired samurai walked through the door with 3 people from his guild following him.
"Excuse me, but I was told that you needed 4 more for your team. We samurai will swear our allegiance to you team leader!"
"Klein….. You are going too far with the samurai stuff. Agil, this is Klein of the Furin Kazan guild and 3 of his guild mates." That made 36 on the team. The 7 of them decided on a time to meet up with the whole team during the weekend. After it was decided that they would meet on Saturday at 3 pm they all left and went their separate ways.
Kirito and Snow Princess went up to the 66th floor dungeon and continued where they left off from the day before. The two of them worked perfectly together now. They had only teamed up for three days but they were able to move like they knew what the other was thinking. The dungeon couldn't throw anything at this team that they couldn't handle. It only took them two more hours before they came upon the giant doors that told them they had just found the boss room.
"We already found the boss room? In only three days?" The Snow Princess almost dropped her sword she was so shocked they had found it so quickly.
"It normally takes me 5-7 days, but I guess it does go faster with 2 people." He looked over at her and smiled a mischievous smile at her. "You ready to go in?"
"What?" The shock on her face could have been seen from the moon.
"Come on, let's go beat it." Kirito casually strode up to the giant doors that reached to the ceiling and slowly pushed them open.
Kirito and Snow Princess entered the room and the torches lit. There was a Wyvern larger than a house in the middle of the room. The both gulped. "How do you do this on your own?"
"Lots of practice. Although with you here it should be a piece of cake." They both smiled and went to work on the 66th floor boss. Kirito used his dual sword attacks and his strength ability to keep the wyvern off balance and it allowed Snow Princess to land several attacks thrusting attacks. The boss's final health bar went down into the red and Kirito initiated his best move Starburst Stream to finish him off.
The boss burst into shards and a large congratulations came across their field of vision. It had taken them more than 30 minutes to defeat him. "See I told you it would be easy."
"If that is what you consider easy I am scared to see what you think is hard." They both started laughing and collapsed on the ground from fatigue. They both spent 5 minutes in silence laying on the ground. Kirito finally got up and offered his hand to the girl laying on the ground. "Let's go check out the next level. We can activate the gate then you will have access to these levels too." (If someone is in a party and helps defeat a boss on a level they don't have access to all levels they skipped will become accessible to them.)
She grabbed his hand and they walked up to the stairs together to the 67th floor. The 67th floor was a desert so large you wouldn't be able to see anything else for miles. It was filled with giant scorpions from what they could tell. They were half way to the city when Snow Princess noticed she hadn't let go of Kirito's hand. The blush that rose to her face rivaled the color of a tomato. She let go quickly hoping he didn't notice how flustered she was.
They got to the gate and activated it.
"It's so quiet here. Doesn't it get boring like this?"
"Not really. I am used to it since I spend most of my time in the game on floors by myself."
"But you're happy I am here right?"
Kirito turned around a look at her. "Yeah, it has been pretty fun these last few days. Did you still want to stay teamed up? Don't you have duties with your guild?" Asuna was relieved. She had been a bit worried that she forced him to party with her.
"No we have taken a break. We just do meetings every once in a while. Otherwise we are free to do what we want."
"That's pretty relaxed."
They both sat down still recovering from the boss battle. "I was wondering. I thought you always played alone so how do you know Klein?"
"Ouch. It sounds like you think I have no friends. I do have a few, but it's more of just a habit to be by myself. I talk to a lot of people IRL." He grew a little solemn while explaining this. She grew silent and the air between them grew awkward. "Sorry. I didn't mean to bring real world in game."
"No that's fine. If you want to talk about it it's alright. We are friends aren't we?"
Kirito thought about that they weren't they. He has acquaintances but the girl sitting next to him was the only person he could call his friend. And he had only known her for a few days. "Yeah we are. So if you ever want to talk to me about stuff you can too."
She smiled at him. She was busy having an internal struggle though. She wanted to get this boy in front of her to talk more about his life. More about who he was. She wanted to know him because she was pretty sure she had already fallen for him, hard. "Of course!"
The two of them went back to their apartments and saved and exited the game.
The next day Kazuto was walking to class by himself. Suguha had kendo practice in the morning and Keiko went with her.
"KAZUTO!" He spun around to see Asuna skipping toward him with a smile on her face.
"You seem to be in a good mood. Did something happen?"
"Yep!" She didn't say what it was though. "You aren't with your sister and the other first year today. Are they ok?"
"Sugu had practice and Keiko went with her." They started walking towards school. "What about you? Normally you are with Rika aren't you?"
Asuna frowned "She went and got sick. It's just a cold though no need to be –" Asuna plummeted to the ground after she tripped over nothing. Showing just how graceful she really is. She realized how ridiculous she must have looked and sat there pouting while Kazuto spent a good amount of time trying and failing to hold in his laughter.
"It wasn't that funny."
He extended out his hand to her and smiled "Let's go. We don't want to be late for class." She stopped for a minute. She thought she felt a hint of Déjà vu, but put it out of her mind. She let the boy pull her up and the two walked into class laughing about what had transpired on the way to class.
Everyone in class was staring at them but they didn't know why. They both had confused looks on their face when Kazuto realized something. He was still holding Asuna's hand from when he helped her up. He let go of her hand quickly and turned bright red.
She immediately went red too after realizing they had been holding hands the whole time. They both quietly went to their seats and avoided eye contact the whole time. Once again the whole class was a buzz with rumors. The only problem for Kazuto was that this time it was his not so secret identity that was the talk of the school. The girl that half the school had a crush on had walked to class holding hands with some loser with no friends (That's what the school was saying at least.)
Kazuto hurried out of the room when the bell for lunch sounded to avoid everyone. He went to the courtyard again to eat and of course Ryoutarou had to show up. "Hey buddy! I heard some rumors about you!"
"Oh great. Not you too."
"Nice job getting Asuna. Even the third years talk about her." A knot grew in his stomach at the mention of this. Jealousy?
"We are just friends that's all."
"Well if that's how it is then how about we talk about more important things. Like Battle of the Guilds! I got asked to be on a team! Not only that but it's the same team as Kirito and Snow Princess. Maybe then I can finally figure out if they are dating!" In all the annoyances that had happened earlier in the day, Kazuto had totally forgotten about the team. It was Friday right now meaning they had a strategy meeting tomorrow. "Are you going to be competing Kazuto?"
Kazuto heard something behind him. Asuna was standing behind him. Had she heard the whole conversation? "Can I talk to you?" She looked serious and a little worried.
"Uh.. Sure." Kazuto got up from his seat and went to follow Asuna when Ryoutarou decided to give him a wink and a thumbs up. All Kazuto could do was roll his eyes.
Asuna and Kazuto walked over to a gazebo that was in the courtyard and sat down on a bench. "I am sorry about earlier. You know… about holding your hand."
"Umm… It's fine." Kazuto couldn't figure out why his heart was pounding so hard until it finally hit him. The jealousy he felt earlier. The embarrassment from holding her hand. The heat immediately rose to his face. 'I like her?'
"Everyone keeps asking me if we are dating now it's so annoying. I wish they would just leave me alone. It doesn't help me the Rika isn't here today."
"Well, if your plan was to make everyone think we aren't dating then dragging me off alone and sitting on a bench together during lunch in full view of the cafeteria was probably not the best choice." Kazuto motioned up to the second floor where Asuna could see all of the eyes staring at them through the windows.
They both started laughing. They finished eating together and went back to class. Again all of the stares made Kazuto feel uncomfortable. The whole class was buzzing again with the new information about the two having lunch together, but he was too busy thinking about something else. That something else was the beautiful girl sitting at the front of the room.
'I have it bad.'
A/N: Here is another chapter. This story is a lot more fluff than I thought it was going to be and it seems like it is going to be a lot longer than I had anticipated but it has definitely been fun to write. We will have to see where it ends up. Thank you for reading it and I hope you continue to enjoy it as much as I have.