"Can you call Kirigaya Kazu-san?"
Kikuouka Seijirou loosened up after the faculty representative in the main office of the school Kazu attended gave a nod and moved back in the office to get to the phone located within. He watched close but he didn't pay as much attention after she went back to call for Kazu.
"She will be here in a minute. Please, take to the side so that further inquiries are clear."
Kikuoka looked around only to realize there were a few more people there and he hadn't noticed. He rubbed the back of his head after stepping aside out of embarrassment. It was very accurate as far as Kazu arriving in a minute. She didn't need to travel very far through the school to get to the office space he was standing outside of. She gave him a confused expression, and he sighed before beckoning her to follow.
After they made it outside to a space with benches and no smoking signs, they sat down. There was nobody around who was within earshot unless they spoke loud, so he began.
"It's good to see you in such good health. How has school been treating you?"
He always started with the casual small talk to smoothly enter a conversation. It was a habit with mixed results.
"School has been fine. How has work been on your end? How is everyone recovering? And did you find out what happened with Akihiko-san's body in the end?"
Kikuoka nodded at first but his expression soured by the end.
"Recovery on the whole is coming along at much better than the medical community's expectations, and the speed of which is attributed with everyone claiming that they needed to make full use of the time you worked so hard to give them. It's truly remarkable how hard everyone is willing to work after all the efforts you put forward in SAO."
Kazu nodded with a gentle smile. She was happy to hear that people were taking their recovery seriously.
"As for finding out what happened with Akihiko-san, he had a nurse working for him and taking care of his body during his time in SAO with everyone. She is with me today, being watched by an associate. She wanted to speak with you. Yes, she was there when he passed as well. She turned over his body when she came forward out of her hiding."
Kazu was surprised to hear that the nurse wanted to speak with her.
"If you don't want to hear her out, I can take her away."
"I'll be fine, I'll meet her. What will be happening with her? Is she being arrested for aiding him as a criminal? Or is she being released?"
Kikuoka shrugged.
"Depends partially on what she says to you. If not for this proposed meeting, she'd be serving in prison already. At least that's what the higher ups are saying. Anyway, I'll have my partner bring her over."
A moment of silence and the sound of vehicle doors opening and shutting with thuds came from a fair distance away. A man similarly dressed in a business coat stood to the side of the woman who wasn't familiar to Kazu. At least at first. Kazu continued looking at their approach, trying to remember if she had seen her appearance in Akihiko's acquaintances through the VR field of work.
When her memories collected together, she realized there was some recognition. She was someone who was working on a medical branch of the VR development. According to what Kazu could remember, her and Akihiko were very close especially in their philosophies before the dive into SAO made Akihiko seem like an entirely different person. Before SAO, he was a leading mind in the virtual reality world, someone many looked up to and idolized. He was a genius, and colleagues gathered around him. Some were great people, and some were toxic leeches.
Ela was one of the people who was connected to them as example. There were some who did their part of the work entirely online, doing virtual simulations, testing, critique. Apparently she contributed much of the deep feature information, like being able to sense everything as close to real as possible, and contributing what made Kazu the strongest person in there. The ability to interact naturally with the virtual space and recreate some sense of reality.
She couldn't remember exactly the name of the medical project the woman in front of her was working on, but knew that she was important and even if she aided the criminal Akihiko, she was only doing her job being a doctor. She would be a significant loss to the future medical community.
Kazu stood and politely bowed to her. She was responded to with a waving of her hands.
"I don't deserve such respect from the person who granted his final wish. The hero who put an end to Akihiko-san's dream. Please, I wish only to ask something of you before I'm taken to prison."
Kazu gave her a confused look.
"Please enlighten me on what this dream was first? What do I have to do with his final wish?"
She gave a bright smile.
"He wanted his world, Aincrad to create a genuine hero. Someone who can lead the world into a new age. Of course this world can't change so easily, and one person can't do that without being supernatural. But you managed to be supernatural in there and that was all he wanted. Someone who could surpass the virtual environment, the virtual world and be something truly special. It's a shame that I can't pass along my work so easily, but I hope you work with Ela-san on carrying forward my work. I only know you and her are in contact, so I apologize if that gave you a different impression."
Kazu held up her hands in signal to stop her.
"Thank you for clarifying that to me, but what do you mean carrying forward your work? And with Ela-san? She hasn't said anything to me about this."
Kazu was flustered, there being too much information to process all at once. She had a feeling the conversation would keep her overwhelmed in trying to keep up. The doctor waved her hand as if that detail wasn't important.
"She promised me she would wait until I got to talk to you. It's clear I should bare some guilt. I didn't stop him from trapping people in SAO when I might have been able to, and I kept him alive as a personal doctor, neglecting the care of other patients who were in sore need during the crisis. I need to atone for my foolish actions spurred on by emotions. But back to my project – I was working on something I was calling the Medicuboid with a small branch team connected to the VR researchers surrounding Akihiko-san. We have some people testing the device, but it needs a lot of tuning and work to do what we wanted it to do. Those testing the device have terminal conditions which need care as soon as possible in order for them to live, but some are entirely unlikely to be able to recover. I hope that you and Ela-san can figure out how to make it work in a way that it gives the medical community all the information we could possibly need to treat a person, and so that it can tend to people with mental conditions through virtual environments and other programs."
Kazu's mind was swimming with trying to keep up with the flow of information coming to her. It made more and more sense to her.
"You bare responsibility to help those who are using your unfinished device, so I think you should atone by focusing entirely on your work. And you didn't save him in the end, you were only servicing one patient but you were one of the medical workers tending to someone who was a victim of the SAO incident. You weren't able to stop him, so you must have tended to him also partly because you felt guilty about not being able to stop him. It's clear you feel badly about your involvement, but you could atone better by committing to your job and helping save more lives, and continuing your work which is supposed to change the future of the medical field. No matter how much I work with Ela-san, I can't replace anyone. She's incredible, but as far as my ability to contribute, I would weigh her down more than anything for a long while."
She shook her head in response.
"Don't discredit yourself. You learn incredibly fast, and you adapt so swiftly I can only imagine what I would have been able to achieve with your ability to learn and adapt. I might have a perfect medicuboid out there keeping people alive with terminal cancer right now. But thank you for your understanding. If that's how you think I should atone, then I will accept that punishment should that be an available punishment to take. You're such an upstanding person, Kazu-san. Please continue doing your very best."
After she finished speaking, Kikuoka motioned to his partner and they left him with Kazu again.
"Thank you for speaking with her. We wanted your opinion on her punishment for being involved with him. You are totally right. Locking her away in a prison, unable to treat patients who need her skills would be a total waste. I will speak to the higher ups on convincing that being her punishment."
Kazu gave him an expression which beckoned for more.
"Haaa...I guess you knew right away this visit was about something else. Correct, if it was just her circumstances we were here for, we would have just asked you to come to RATH. I'm also here to petition your help with something that came up shortly after you and your friends freed the remaining SAO survivors. One of the survivors who were labeled part of Laughing Coffin is under suspect of murder."
Kazu blinked in disbelief.
"I thought it would be obvious that someone who committed murder in there be tried for murder outside, but is that what you mean?"
He shook his head with a depressed expression on his face.
"Unfortunately, one of the Laughing Coffin members was aided in escape. And you probably noticed in the news that there was a victim of VR after the SAO incident. I would like your opinion on these statements apart and together."
Kazu sighed and closed her eyes as she thought over the situation.
"Apart, they could be totally separate incidents. If someone from Laughing Coffin escaped, they unlikely would have recovered fast enough to be able to commit such a crime without outside help, like someone who might have aided their escape. Together, well I just explained. It's entirely possible it's connected. I don't believe for a second that VR killed the person. Either it was murder, personal health neglect during long dive periods, or a random health occurrence like a heart attack or seizure which led into their death. A person could die truly while plugged into VR in any way. Do you have any more information for me to go off of?"
Kazu gave it a thought, why was she being asked about a crime? Wasn't Kikuoka working for the relief of the SAO survivors?
"So there's a chance it's connected..."
She wanted to bonk her forehead for getting sidetracked.
"Yes, there's a chance it's connected. But again, there's many ways someone can die while plugged into VR unrelated to their experience in VR. As bad as the NerveGear was flawed regarding keeping someone safe from what happened, VR devices released since then have been built to work with all kinds of safety features, like an auto-kick which prevents you from staying logged into a virtual environment against the health needs of your body. This would mean the situation resolves itself and it was murder, but not everyone has gotten rid of their NerveGears because it lets them no-life their games easier. And because unfortunately recalling devices hasn't taken them away from their owners."
Kikuoka sighed and reached to his chest pocket, revealing a cigarette box. Kazu smacked his hand.
"Remember, no smoking zone."
He fumbled and waved his hands in front of himself.
"Sorry, sorry...it's just...it has been a lot to deal with since everyone else returned and it has been far too much for my team to handle, just in this district. Having a new crime as a possibility connected to the incident just complicates things more and stretches us more thinly than we already were. I wish I didn't have to bring you into this, but could you please check out the game the latest victim was playing and tell me if there's more to the game which might contribute to causes of death so we have as much information as possible? We can't really reach outside of our connections for help on this, and you would likely figure out what we need to know sooner than anyone else."
She shook her head and faced him directly in the eyes before saying what was on her mind.
"You will not have my assistance unless you give me more information, and enough information to convince me it's imperative that I change games again. I don't intend to play a game again until most of my friends can go back into games unless you give me a reason that my involvement past this is needed."
He stood up, straightened his coat, heaved a depressed sigh and then faced her again.
"The game that the victim died plugged into was Gun Gale Online. It has servers specially specked to military and law enforcement so that they can do their training in it. The victim is not military or law enforcement, but he was one of the top players in the world. He won the latest world tournament called Bullet of Bullets. There are plenty who hold a grudge against him for it because they think he might have been cheating but the game also does connect other countries who might be less understanding of a loss in a world tournament."
He rubbed his face to warm himself up and continued.
"As for information regarding his death, the information so far is that he was under the influence of alcohol, and had some injection marks on his arms, some newer and some older. According to the autopsy, it could have been any one of those things which killed him, but the most likely cause is heart failure due to overdose."
Kazu sighed and went over the information in her head.
"I can't honestly rule out much here. You should ask Ela-san stuff like this. If you need me to give you an answer, I think he just overdosed on his medicine, accidentally taking twice his normal energy medication which is common in some unfortunate no-lifers. Either that, or if we consider the option of murder then it would require the culprit to be able to get hold of some kind of drug easy to obtain which would cause an overdose, something that wouldn't be traceable."
Kikuoka paled when Kazu mentioned the possibility of an untraceable drug.
"Would such a drug be available in small clinics?"
Kazu nodded with a confused expression.
"The Laughing Coffin escapee is part of a family who runs a clinic, and before the SAO incident was in line to inherit the clinic. The family has said they haven't seen him, but their clinic was raided..."
Kazu waved her hand.
"Then there's your answer, have the raid or robbery or whatever happened to the clinic traced, find your Laughing Coffin person and any accomplices they had. There were only a few criminals in SAO I would have given a second chance, and I very much doubt this person was one of them. Check in with the family a little deeper, investigate any siblings, and you might not need me to log into the game at all. Tell me in a week if you still need me to log in there."
Kazu stood up and began to walk away. Kikuoka let out a cough which was obviously meant to get her attention.
"Was there something else? I need to get back to my classes. I'm already incredibly behind on my classes, I don't want to be stuck catching up any longer than I need to be."
He nodded and put his hands in his coat pockets. He didn't understand how Kazu was perfectly fine in her winter uniform. It was still meant for indoors since she didn't grab her coat. He felt like he was about to go into shock from the cold.
"Next time I meet up with you, I will try to wait until you're done at school. That way we could relax with some coffee or tea or sweets of some sort. I really should treat you for helping so much."
Kazu gave him a grin.
"If you want to pay me back, give me a job and a bit of forward pay for the work I've already done. As much as this was distracting, the classroom is way too stuffy in the winter..."
She walked the rest of the way back into the school and gave Kikuoka a very relaxed wave. He sighed in response and hurried his walk back to the vehicle. The warmth of the vehicle was like a gentle embrace after being in the cold so long. He looked at his coworker and Koujiro Rinko who was Akihiko's doctor.
"Well, let's get to the office. Kazu helped with the murder investigation too. Also, she suggested us giving her a job as a method of payback and some forward pay for the work she has done. What do you think of the job part of that, Koujiro-san? Think she could help with testing anything?"
Rinko gave it a moment to think on it.
"For someone who is healthy, the only kind of work I can think would be the latter program I was mentioning earlier. One which would help with mental and emotional trauma through a more realistic virtual environment. She wouldn't be harmed from it, and she could give us feedback on things to be improved. Otherwise, I could only think of something that would make use of her skills in virtual environments and...oh. How about the artificial intelligence project you were heading a while back? Weren't you going to make use of the seed from SAO to develop a virtual environment which you can use to develop your AI. Not sure how you would fit her in there, maybe she would oversee the development of the AI since she's also been learning from Ela-san and that woman has a whole family of AI who all have individual minds of their own."
Kikuoka blinked, his coworker already driving them back to the office. He was baffled at the suggestion and how the suggestion escalated.
"That!"
Rinko smiled.
"What did you want to use the AI for again?"
Kikuoka shrugged.
"It was a project I was shelving. A project from the higher ups. I think it might be on the automation type of usage. To take the human element out of flying planes or other vehicles. Something to make daily life more safe. Could have been something more nefarious which might be why I was shelving it, but I'd like to think better of the higher ups, you know?"
Self driving vehicles were something that was still in development in most of the world, not many countries getting very far before cutting off their development information from public usage. It could make it safer to travel, but it could also be far more dangerous if there was any issues with the programming. Having a well developed AI running a vehicle would cut out the human weaknesses, and cut out the potential issues of a complex program.
"Weren't Ela-san's AI bottom-up? Raised like her own children? She's quite young in spite of her AI reflecting a mental age of even older than Kazu-san's physical age. I'd think that Ela-san's AI were made to both emotionally support her, and to be able to assist her in her work. I would love to study her children but it's totally inappropriate to ask such a thing. She told me before that she had been working on them for seven years."
Kikuoka sighed.
"If she would be up to letting us know how she did it all, it would make that project so much easier and faster. Ah well...we could make use of Kazu-san learning from her to make it work faster. Just ask her to learn about AI sooner rather than later."
Rinko sighed.
"It feels bad suggesting this after all. We're considering controlling her life when she deserves every right to do whatever she wants with her life. But it's like it's already decided by Ela-san and our actions. Well, your actions since you're working with the people you are. I'll never understand why you went from technology to the military."
Kikuoka shrugged.
"From what I remember, Kazu-san wanted to study about AI anyway, because of her own AI daughter Yui-chan. So she could understand Yui better and be a better mother to her. She's very admirable and I think she's more open to working with Ela-san than we might guess. Controlling her life is unlikely. She's quite stubborn and sets her mind to what she does very well. Consider her actions in SAO. She was very stubborn and set on getting out. Keeping everyone alive she could. She succeeded, I would remind you. Who could control someone like that?"
Rinko chuckled, a smile resting on her face.
"Right, she's someone truly incredible. Hopefully this gross feeling goes away soon. I need to be ready to tend to patients as soon as possible and being in the right frame of mind for it is imperative."
The three of them arrived at their destination, RATH.
