Dreamers of the Day - Book One - Part Two - The Archer IV
"So the floors, they're stacked on top of each other." Kyouko imagined while gazing up at the far away ceiling doing its best impression of a sky, "It's like a big layer cake." She took a small bite of bread smeared with goat cheese, chewed, and swallowed thoughtfully.
"Well I think it's more like a wedding cake," Leafa replied.
The two were seated upon a sun warmed stone on the slopes overlooking Champar. Forstier's herd browsed contentedly on a fat springtime bounty of grasses and wildflowers. A mild breeze swept the pasture, the land rippling like waves. It was the ideal time of day to break for lunch. Apples, crusty bread, goat's cheese, and barley water. It wasn't fine dining, but at least the food was wholesome and satisfying. Even if it did make Kyouko pine for the likes of Esterre.
While they ate, they talked, the subject was 'nothing in particular', usually observations about the place they found themselves in. They didn't have much in common, but Leafa had been invaluable in giving context to some of the things Kyouko didn't understand.
"A hundred tier wedding cake . . ." Kyouko thought. Her wedding cake had been three tiers, traditional, she was fairly certain the top was still stored away in a freezer someplace, for posterity. She shook her head, hair flowing silken down her back, "And Akihiko wants us to climb all the way to the top?"
"That's what it sounds like." Leafa agreed, the girl looked no happier about it than Kyouko. "That Akihiko person said to reach the Ruby Palace if we wish to attain freedom." She took a swig of barley water from her skin. "That must be the one hundredth floor. Maybe that's the condition to let us go."
"A hundred floors?" Each of them as big as this one? "Impossible." Kyouko concluded matter of factly, even if it was possible, she just wouldn't do it. She'd give nothing to a man like Akihiko Kayaba. Besides, "Who would possibly obey him? Akihiko must be the most wanted man in the world right now. He'll be found soon, and he'll be forced to let us go." He must have known that. So must everyone else. So what was the use of all this?
"It's been almost a week." The elvish girl observed doubtfully.
"Five days." Kyouko corrected, "Not including the launch day." Not that she had been keeping count. Five days earning their keep from the NPC couple in exchange for room and board. Five days waiting impatiently for Kouichirou. Five days hoping for some sign that they would be logged out. "We just have to trust the authorities," she insisted, trying to feel the conviction in her own voice.
At least it had been peaceful, Kyouko thought, nothing like the madness of the Town of Beginnings had broken out here. In fact, the village denizens were remarkably placid and incurious. Probably because they were 'NPCs' simply going about their routines, only deviating on account of Kyouko or Leafa. Nor had trouble followed them here from Town, Champar was far enough, and far enough off the beaten path, to have not attracted other players.
That was certainly a mixed blessing. No visitors meant no trouble makers sharing their refuge. It also meant no news from the Town. Once again, Kyouko opened her menu and navigated to the messaging function.
(0) FRIENDS
The pronouncement hung in the air of her inbox at eye level, mocking her in a way that made Kyouko privately grateful the menu was invisible to others by default. If she'd just had Kouichirou, or even Nishida, in her contacts then things would be so much simpler.
That wasn't her fault, Kyouko reminded herself, if everything had gone as it should, she'd have logged out after the inaugural ceremony and that would have been the end of it. There should have been no need for her to contact anyone using the message system. But if Kouichirou didn't come soon, she'd have to go looking for him . . .
"I just don't get it. How is he keeping us here?" Leafa asked, she played absently with a long lock of golden hair, a distant look in her emerald eyes.
"I can't really say." Kyouko sighed, reluctantly she added, "You know more about full dive than I do."
"Not me," Leafa smiled shyly, "My brother is the real dive head. He could talk your ear off about this stuff for hours if you asked him the littlest question." Her smile faded slowly, "Kinda wish I'd listened now."
"Hmm."
"So, Atalanta-san?" Kyouko's ears perked. "You've really never played a videogame before?"
"Is that unusual?" Kyouko didn't think so, games were a hobby for children and otaku.
"Not really, no." Leafa agreed, "I wasn't much of a fan of them myself, other than the ones on my phone, I guess, not until I tried ALfheim. Just a little surprising, something like Sword Art Online would be your first game."
"Like I said, I was playing with a relative. They asked me to join them for the launch." She offered the same carefully sanitized answer she had given on their first day together. Then, as this seemed to put the poor girl off for some reason, reluctantly she added, "Well, if I'm being totally honest, this isn't my first game ever, exactly . . . " Leafa perked up visibly. Games were a passtime for children and otaku. Kyouko had never been the latter, but she had been the former, once. "It's my first dive game," Kyouko specified. Her first and last, especially after this! "But I used to play one other one."
"Oh?"
"Do you . . . Know the one with the little aliens and the ball that goes 'paku paku' and moves like this?" Kyouko made scissors with her fingers. There had been a cabinet at the convenience store in town when she was in middle school. She'd been really good at that game.
"Huh?" Leafa's expression turned bemused.
"N-Never mind." Kyouko looked away quickly. "Anyways, I don't know anything about FullDive, but my relative, and his friends especially, are quite knowledgeable about the subject. Probably even more than your brother."
A weak smile returned to Leafa's lips, "Somehow, I doubt that, Ka- big brother loves this stuff."
"I think you'd be surprised", Kyouko replied dryly. One of her ears twitched as the distant sound of barking reached them. Leafa heard it too, she made to stand, but Kyouko stopped her. "You finish eating, I'll get this one."
"Are you sure, Ata-san?"
"I need to stretch my legs." Kyouko confirmed, scooting off the rock and dusting off the pleats of her dress. She did in fact feel the urge to stretch, a big one extending in an arch from head to tail.
"Alright, just be careful," Leafa warned.
Kyouko snorted, she appreciated the concern, but after five days in Champar she could not have helped but learn a few things about their present circumstances, virtual or otherwise. Like the nature of this world, the Steel Castle of Aincrad, which soared above the Cloud Sea, each of its floors like a Kingdom unto itself.
How ridiculous. People shouldn't even be able to survive on the highest levels, the air would be too thin. Leafa would say 'That's true, but it's fantasy!' But that seemed like a poor excuse to Kyouko.
She'd learned more about Orignia, as well, and Champar in particular. The fearful uncertainty of the first few days had yielded to a growing confidence that the fields and pastures were safe enough to walk under daylight. The villagers traveled the open ground with nothing but walking sticks for protection. In fact, the nearest Kyouko had come to one of the fearsome 'monsters' that supposedly inhabited parts of the land was spotting some boar foraging near the tree line, and a single encounter with a pack of hideous rodents almost as big as Darter.
The 'Shrewmen' had fled on sight, shooed off by an angry Forstier and his energetic dog. They were apparently little more than a nuisance, overgrown pests, cowardly by nature, attempting to get their filthy paws on anything they could steal and trade to the 'Kobolds' that ruled the North. If that was all Kyouko had to worry about, she'd be fine.
"Yes yes, I'm coming." The Pictish called as she hiked up the slope, following the dog's incessant barking to the summit. One of the nannies had found some choice plants and her browsing had carried her away like a trail of breadcrumbs, over the summit and down onto the slope of the next valley.
"Come here you." Kyouko called, the goat was being stubborn as, well, itself . . . Continuing a ways down slope to where the ground became steadily more rocky and overgrown with scrub trees. "Hmmph, really going to make me do this, are you?"
She worked her way down, taking a length of rope hung from her belt and approaching the browsing animal slowly. The goat bleated, but being alone, without the company of the herd, it was docile as Kyouko gently leashed it the way Forstier had shown her.
"You've had your fun, back to your friends." Kyouko squared her shoulders and started to pull . . . then stopped . . . The tension drained slowly from her body as she stood straight. Her ears, her damned cat ears, pivoted one way and then another, as if trying to localize some incredibly minute noise.
A shiver ran down her spine almost as if . . . Her eyes wandered to where the ground turned raw, jagged rocks thrust through the soil like splintered bones. Only hardy plants and trees clung around the mouth of what looked to be some kind of natural cavern, the hillside folding into the pitch darkness within.
Kyouko's eyes narrowed, her ears moved forward and her tail lifted as she might, she neither saw nor heard anything from the depths. But still, she felt like she was being . . . watched . . .
"Lady Fairy!" An ear pivoted in the direction she'd come from. "Not that way, Lady Fairy!" The Goatherd called, holding his flat cap in place as he ran down the hill.
"I was just getting this stray. What's the matter?"
Forstier took the leash from her, squared his shoulders, and started pulling before he answered.
"We're getting a bit beyond the safety of the village, Lady Fairy, you mustn't go that way, now!"
Kyouko frowned, she supposed that made sense, they were getting quite a ways from Champar now. So she helped Forstier get his nanny moving, and then followed him back, giving the far valley one final glance as they crossed back over the hill. There was still much work to do.
Champar sold its animal products in the Capital City of this floor, the Town of Beginnings. Meat, hide, wool, dairy. The sale of the first two was simple enough, literally walking the animals to market as livestock. Wool was shorn from the herds, and then woven into fabric to be sold in the city as well. Dairy took extra steps.
In the absence of refrigeration, milk would spoil before making it to market. So aside from the fresh milk and cream reserved for their families each day, the villagers of Champar converted the bulk of their production into butter and cheese.
Each day, for the past four days, an eager Leafa, and a much less eager Kyouko, had helped with milking the goats, separating the cream, and then delivering that cream to the water mill at the heart of Champar. Although it would be far more accurate, Kyouko corrected, to call it a 'water churn'. The building did contain a mill for grinding wheat into fine flour, but also a mechanical churn, driven by an arrangement of black iron gears greased in animal fat. The gears made an unearthly, ear aching, noise as they meshed, driving the churn to whip up tubs of cream until they frothed and then thickened into fresh butter.
It was an alarming affair, when in operation, as the butter thickened the timbers of the frame would groan and creak, prompting Kyouko and Leafa to wait outside while the villagers worked. Memories of maimed men came back to Kyouko, old man Yamada and his withered arm had given her nightmares all the way to highschool. But, it was a very convenient machine, in its way, and one that pointed to the fact that Champar had once been much more productive than it was today. Productive enough to afford such a labor saving device and to justify the expense.
"Orignia was once a prosperous Kingdom . . . " Kyouko murmured, then shook her head angrily. That implied Orignia had ever existed as anything but a part of the gameworld of Sword Art Online. Preposterous. Although, she couldn't deny being impressed by the attention to detail . . .
While Forstier and the other men had worked the Churn, Kyouko wandered off to examine some of the closest buildings. It was a bit like peeking into a well made diorama. Glimpsing a whole world made tidy and comprehensible at a glance. Villagers went on about their business, occasionally giving her strange looks, which she pointedly ignored. She peaked through the open doors of the smithy where an aged, burly man practiced his craft, mending tools, making nails, and the window of the healer's cottage, where a fair young woman was tending to a farmer who had cut himself in the fields.
Her eyes narrowed as she watched the girl carefully undoing the bandages to check on the wound. A slash of vividly glowing red leaked particles into the air like spores while the medicine woman washed the wound, checked for signs of infection or necrosis, and then reapplied bandages.
All very real, until it suddenly wasn't.
When her own daughter had been young, Kyouko recalled Asuna playing house and having tea time with her stuffed bear, serving pretend food and pouring pretend tea, having pretend conversations about pretend matters. All very normal things for a little girl to do. The medicine woman and her patient reminded Kyouko of that. Imaginary people playing out a game of make believe.
She touched the spot above her own temple. The clotted blood had long since washed away, but the meaning remained unclear.
"Rare to see a Pictish huntress in a place like this."
Kyouko stopped in her tracks, the voice was gruff, but younger than most she'd heard in Champar. It belonged to a man, an 'NPC' she corrected herself, seated upon a stool outside of a small cottage marked by a hanging bullseye sign.
She paused as she looked him over, and once more, her eyes narrowed. The NPC didn't look like most of the soft and kindly residents of Champar, their faces turned ruddy with perpetual sunburn. Rather, he was darker skinned, and perhaps thirty years of age, his short cut hair either prematurely gray or perhaps platinum blonde, depending on how the light took it. His eyes were dark brown and downcast, concentrated on the arrow he was fletching. He wore something like a bolo tie around his collar, clipped with a small carved decoration that seemed to represent the head and horns of some bovine creature.
Besides Forstier and his wife, it was rare for any of the NPCs to speak to Kyouko or Leafa without first being spoken to. The Publican and the Priest might say 'good morning' when they walked by in passing, but that was all. Leafa had helpfully explained that this was normal in most games and an NPC calling out for attention was worth investigating. It had done much to demystify the strangely real, but not quite, behavior of the Champar's denizens.
So, putting hands on hips, she raised a brow. "Oh? And how would you know that I'm a 'huntress'?" At first she didn't think he was going to answer, that this was all a complete waste of time, then the man sedately put the arrow down, looked up, and nodded at the bow Kyouko carried slung over her shoulder. "Right," she sighed.
Leafa had insisted that she carry it with her, just in case.
The man beckoned, the message was clear, Kyouko offered up her bow for inspection. He held it in his hands, looking it over, then stood and notched one of his own arrows, giving the bow a test draw before relaxing.
"Well?"
"It's not a very good bow," He concluded plainly.
Was he trying to be irksome? Kyouko huffed, she knew that already. The short bow was of a simple and unremarkable design, with few of the refined features that generations of bowyers had implemented to increase draw weight and keep size down. It was, in fact, suitable only for hunting the smallest of game, and apparently, surprising the daylights out of some pushy town guards.
"And I suppose you know good bows." Kyouko replied, not thinking who she was talking to.
An unspoken answer, the man reached behind himself and produced what Kyouko could only assume was his own preferred weapon. It made the simple straight short bow look like a toy.
A recurve bow, fully strung, its limbs describing fair sweeps as graceful as a bird's wings. The wood was dark, almost black, inlaid with finely carved scrollwork around the shelf, dizzyingly intricate patterns, something like celtic knots.
Before Kyouko knew it, the weapon was dropped into her hands and she was left to feel the weight of the thing pressing through her palms. Not heavy, exactly, but dense. She bit her lip and shook her head, this wasn't real, it wasn't real. But she couldn't shake the feeling she was holding a work of art. She could almost feel the quality, the care with which it had been made.
"Dark Yew, from the heartwood of the tree, not many pieces like that left in Orignia." The man explained. "Not since Ilfang's brood seized the North side of the floor. The name's Callus", the man grunted, "If you're interested in some work, huntress, I could use a spare bow arm. And there might be something better than that twig in it for you."
Now it made sense, Leafa had explained this sort of NPC to her. "I'm afraid I have to decline. I've no intention to take up that sort of work." Kyouko answered curtly, carefully returning the bow. Callus tilted his head, blinked a few times as he mulled the reply over, and then shrugged. "Suit yourself, Lady Fairy, if you ever change your mind, you know where to find me."
"Thank you, I won't." She'd turned on her heel and stalked off to find Leafa.
She'd thought that would be the end of it, until that evening, after Dinner. "Wait, you really turned him down?"
Leafa looked up from the game that sat between her and Forstier while they played beside the fireplace after dinner. It looked to be some variation on chess, though Kyouko wasn't familiar with the meaning of the pieces, and it was played on a smaller board. Probably meant to be some kind of 'folk-game' by which farmers passed the time.
Most people in modern Japan assumed farming was grueling labor. They were correct. But the back breaking work of tilling, seeding, and harvesting, frantic measures when the weather turned, or when crops were blighted, months of work crammed into weeks, merely punctuated the long lazy procession of the seasons.
Plant in spring, harvest in fall, the rest was waiting, and watching, and worrying, about the crop, about the weather, about money. Naturally, farmers found things to do with that time, they mended tools, they tinkered with machines they couldn't afford to pay someone to fix, they read and wrote in their cultivation journals, fretted over things they couldn't change, they sat around and talked on long summer afternoons when even the shade was sweltering.
And they played games much like the one Leafa played with Forstier. Kyouko's own father had been a lover of Go and Shogi, things of that nature.
"Of course I turned him down." Kyouko replied, seated in her nightshirt with her back against Ellaine's chair, the goatherd's wife had taken to combing her hair to a gloss as she did every night. "I've no intention of learning to fight."
Leafa blinked owlishly and began to speak. "I know, when we first met . . . " Kyouko felt her cheeks turning red. "That . . . Was an exception . . . born of extraordinary circumstances." And one that she was conflicted about every day when Kouichirou didn't arrive. She could always go back to town to look for him, following the road, but what if the guards she'd held up remembered her? What had she been thinking when she'd done that? In one moment she'd gone from a respectable citizen to holding an officer of the law at arrow point. "I am not a violent person." She insisted.
"Yeah, me neither," the Fairy girl said softly, then her attention turned to the shortsword, always near at hand, resting against her chair, "But in this world, you might still need to defend yourself."
This world?
This world was make believe. A hallucination forced on all of them. That it was dangerous didn't change that fact. "What do you think, Forstier-san?" Leafa glanced at the goatherd seated in his chair by the fire.
The kindly older man's mustache twitched, he ran a hand over his balding pate, "I reckon yer' talkin bout ol' Callus. Makes his way as a huntsman and somethin' of a sheriff in these parts owing to leadin' the younger men in keepin' the fields cleared and the pasture safe." Forstier paused, rubbing his pate again. "I heard he was lookin' for more help."
"He sounds like a tutorial NPC." Leafa concluded, making another move on the gameboard that forced a reply from Forstier. "It's probably pretty safe to take him up on his offer. If you want, I could go with you."
Go with her? In other words, 'party up', like this was still a game? The notion soured Kyouko's mood instantly. Leafa was holding up well, given their situation, but on some level the girl was treating this entirely too lightly. The way she treated Champar almost like a summer camp, the way she treated Forstier and Ellaine with more than just formal politeness. Unlike Asuna, all those years ago, Leafa was clearly too old to be playing pretend with these dolls.
"That won't be necessary, because I won't be going." She stood slowly, forcing Ellain to stop her combing. "I've no need to defend myself because I have no intention of wandering into danger." She gave Leafa a look that made it clear the conversation was closed, before climbing the stairs up to the loft and bed.
That night, sleep did not come quickly to Kyouko. Patience, she told herself, she needed to exercise patience. But it had been five days, and still no sign of Kouichirou. She'd swiped open the menu in the air above her, staring at the empty inbox.
(0) FRIENDS
Her eyes trained on the clock slowly ticking toward midnight. Then it would be six days. Saturday. Including the launch day, that was an entire week. She could see it now, she'd missed the all department meeting, and while she was indisposed, her responsibilities would be distributed to the other professors. The possibility of advancement next year had already slipped through her fingers. And if this went on long enough, then the setback to her career would take ages to undo.
And in the meantime, her Shou was alone trying to contain the damage to their family name. She could only imagine what the fallout looked like at that moment, what he was going through. And what Asuna would be experiencing at school. The vicious rumors that would spread about the Yuuki family, trying to claw her daughter from her rightful place.
She was not a violent person, Kyouko told herself, violence disturbed her as it should, but at that moment, she wouldn't have lost much sleep putting a few arrows in Akihiko's back side.
"Now that would be a reason to learn how to shoot a bow properly." She murmured before drifting off to the muted sound of the fire, and the wood on wood 'clak' of playing pieces so that, in her dreams, Kyouko remember being very small, sitting beside her father on the porch during sweet summer evenings, the 'clak' of Go pieces as he played Mister Yamada from the field over, a cigarette clutched in his hand as he grimaced and considered his stratagem. And sometimes, he'd let her sit in his lap, and move the piece, just like him . . .
The next day had gone much as the days before, wake early, breakfast and light morning chores, accompany Forstier to care for the herd until it was milking time. Separate the cream, and deliver it to the churn. By now it was beginning to feel like a routine, until it came time to load up the butter in a borrowed wagon and take it back to the barn The next day was a market day in the Town of Beginnings, or so Forstier said, and some of the men would be taking the products of the village for sale. If Kouichirou didn't appear today, then Kyouko considered asking to ride with the wagons to go look for him herself.
Leafa had been only too happy to help the men load up, leaving Kyouko free to walk the village square, as was becoming her habit. The blacksmith, the medicine woman, the house of the village chief, and the public house. Kyouko was just passing by the pub when she heard the door chime open. She braced for the banal and scripted 'A good morning to yee' of the publican.
"Well well well, what do we have here?" The voice sounded like none of Champar's NPCs, not even the gruff Callus, in fact, it was saccharinely girlish. "Is that a Pictish I see?" Kyouko turned and was confronted by a girl she instantly knew for another player. For one thing, she was wearing one of the common starting outfits and carried a spear at her side, resting the shaft easily against her shoulder. For another, she was approaching with a look of intent her eyes that was at odds with placidity of the villagers.
"Do I . . . Know you?" Kyouko frowned.
The forced girlishness went beyond just the voice. She was slender, her pale features exceptionally youthful, thin crim lips and ruby eyes, like a beautiful adolescent doll, blood red hair was tied up in ribboned pig tails that fell all the way to her knees.
"Oy, Red!" The pub door chimed again, another red head, but otherwise utterly the opposite of the first, emerged and stretched up to his full height. Male, and built like a bear, wide shoulders, thick arms, and broad barrel chest straining at the stitching of his shirt, combined with a thickly bearded face, wild unkempt mane, and preponderance of body hair peeking out from the collar of his shirt and dusting his forearms. He looked, Kyouko surmised, rather like the leader of some army of uncouth brigands. He saw Kyouko and his expression immediately turned to annoyance. "Huh, ya know this chick?"
"Not at all." The girl replied.
"Then what's she doin' so far from town, huh?" The man suddenly tensed up, his hand reaching blindly for the sword at his side. "You some kinda Beta tester?"
Kyouko took a startled step back. "Beta? N-no . . ." Those were players who had been part of the limited launch, weren't they? Kouichirou had been one, that was why he'd been so skilled in the tournament.
"Bullshit," the man grunted, "We only learned about this place cuz'a that little shit I caught by the scruff. She's gotta be a Beta for sure, probably picked this place to hide out!" It was close enough to the truth that Kyouko's face must have betrayed her. "Feh, I knew it!" He tried to move forward, Kyouko taking a step back, only for his path to be blocked by his companion's spear.
"So what if she is a Beta tester, Kibaou?" The girl lifted a brow in a way that seemed calculated to be disarming.
The man shoved the spear aside. "Those R-A lackeys abandoned us. Good role models to the new players, my ass!"
"Abandoned?" Kyouko shook her head.
"Well," the girl raised her brow once more, the mildest hint of surprise graced her features, "I don't think she knows. Town of Beginnings is falling apart, dear. Anyone who isn't huddling under a rock is picking fights with the NPCs. As for the Beta testers, most of them cut and ran the second Akihiko finished his little 'tutorial'. I guess in this world, it really is everyone for themselves." She barred her partner's path with her spear once more. "Oh, and by the way, I'm pretty sure that bishounen was a dev, not a Beta Tester."
A developer?! Kyouko's pulse quickened. Would they know that about Kouichirou? No, she didn't think he'd reveal that sort of information. He hadn't even told that group of players he was strangely friendly with.
Kibaou snorted, "That's a hundred times worse than a Beta Tester. Developers helped that Akihiko guy make this death trap. There's no way they didn't know somethin' was sus!"
"They're stuck too, you know." His companion said reasonably.
"Heh, That just means they're accomplices and idiots!"
"Excuse me, the Beta Tester, or Developer, you met . . ." Kyouko went quiet as a mouse as Kibaou glared down at her. Then her teaching experience kicked in, she'd dealt with worse students, she'd dealt with worse faculty. She squared her shoulders, she dug in her heels, and locked eyes, refusing to back down. Backing down would just make her look guilty to this imbecile. "What did you do to them?"
"Huh? What's it to ya?" Kibao menaced.
"Oh nothing much." The girl giggled, "The big guy here just scared'm off. Sent him running back to town, minus his sword."
A sword?
Kibaou patted the hilt that looked considerably bigger than the one carried by Leafa. "Just makin'm pay us back what they owe. Least they can do for gettin' us all stuck here."
Kyouko sighed inwardly, she was fairly certain Kouichirou was a spearman, judging by his weapon choice during the tourney.
"Of course, the real prize wasn't the weapon, it was what he had to say." The girl gave their surroundings a careful inspection for eavesdroppers, then leaned in close. "Say, you wouldn't happen to know the lay of the land around here, would you?"
"Why?" Kyouko asked carefully. "A little." More than a little. After five days she had a fairly good mental map of the valley.
"Maybe we can help each other out. You see, we got some information from that sniveling little Developer before he ran back to town. Seems there might be a way out of this game after all."
A way out?! Kyouko held her expression, but try as she might, she couldn't prevent her ears from perking.
"A backdoor they tucked in for debugging purposes squirreled away someplace around here. He said he was looking for it when we came across him yesterday." She let that sink in for several long moments, waiting to see how Kyouko would respond.
"That sounds . . . too good to be true . . ." Which meant it probably was.
The girl smiled, "Smart, I like you. That's why we're checking it out, carefully. What do you say?"
"I said, it sounds too good to be true." Kyouko repeated. But what if it wasn't?
Nishida had said something like that while chatting with Kouichirou. Software was so complex these days, it was impossible for a programmer to account for everything. There were always back doors, gaps in any system. There must be a gap in this one too, something Akihiko hadn't considered, or had forgotten in the sheer scope of the thing.
"Well?" The girl pressed.
"Just checking it out, right?"
The girl's smile widened, "That's right. Always room for one more."
Kyouko bit her lip so hard she threatened to draw blood. The pain was the final impetus. There had to be a way. Find out if this 'backdoor' was real, and if so, find Kouichirou, go home and try to pick up the pieces . . . So she gave a small nod.
"Good girl! Let's seal the deal by becoming friends!" The girl swiped in the air, making gestures that Kyouko knew to be menu navigation. A prompt blinked in the corner of her vision and Kyouko quickly navigated to her own message box.
ACCEPT FRIEND REQUEST FROM ROSALIA?
YES/NO
Hesitating only a moment more, Kyouko steeled herself and selected 'YES'.