It was difficult to get her hands on one, just because of the limits of the game. There were beads and necklaces by the score, of course, in every style and flavor you could imagine, but none of them were quite right. Some were too flashy, the lion's share had the wrong number of beads…
What she usually settled with was a bracelet with ten amber beads. It provided some token buff- 5% buff to damage against plant enemies- but that wasn't why she wore it. The rumors said it was a sort of a flex, a way of her saying that she didn't need buffs and stacked numbers to kick butt.
Which, yeah, was true, but it wasn't the reason she wore the bracelet.
When she first got absorbed in VR, she kept on forgetting. She felt awful about always forgetting after long nights spend gaming, but she had an aha moment. Part of the reason she loved full dive was that it was like life in a normal body. She hung out, she had downtime in a body that wasn't failing her. Why not just… slip it in then?
Admittedly, the inside of a dungeon wasn't exactly the right headspace for it, but she tried to do it anyways.
Heck, she didn't really need the bracelet. She knew it by heart by now. Sure, part of the point was letting you think instead of focusing on counting, but she knew it like she knew her own name.
She went through it on quiet (digital) nights, as she worked out the kinks of her sword skill. Ideally, she would go through the motions of the skill as easily as she went through the prayer.
That was what gave her a name and a hard number. The eleven hit sword skill, Mother's Rosario. Ten Hail Marys and an Our Father for the soul of whoever it hit. They'd need it.
Really though, when properly executed, you could barely get through a Jesus prayer before the skill was up. Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. A syllable for every hit and four to spare. A digital weapon, not a spiritual one, but she liked to think it was impressive, in its own way.
When clasping her mother's rosary in the real world only brought her pain, she could soar through the motions in-game, almost as easy as breathing.
(Alfheim took up most of her time spent in full dive, but she did occasionally do other things. Occasional visits to other games the Sleeping Knights favored, but also sims. There was a small market for them in Japan, but with some pleading and a willingness to suffer through machine translation, she got a chance to walk around Saint Peter's, see Gethsemane. Even better, no one was there to stop her from running around a little. Come on, she was only human.)
"Wait a minute, what time is it?"
"It's, uh, twenty til midnight?"
"Shoot!" Yuuki cried.
At first, Asuna thought she just had a schedule to keep. (Asuna should be keeping a sleep schedule, but…) But no, she didn't make to log off or anything- they all just hunkered down and took a rest as she took off her bracelet.
"What's today?" She asked, tapping at the amber.
"Thursday."
"Already?" She squawked.
"Yep."
Yuuki smiled. "I can't complain about the Luminous, though, really."
Asuna was pretty sure she had lost the plot, but any doubt she had vanished when Yuuki knelt down and began to pray. "In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen."
The other members of the Sleeping Knights didn't dare speak, even as they kept watch or choked down healing potions. If they had nothing to do, their gazes seemed to drift to Yuuki without any input on their part, like she had some gravity.
Yuuki, apparently, was a Christian. She went through some sort of statement of belief: belief in God, in Christ, in the Holy Spirit, in the Catholic church, and the resurrection of the dead. Asuna suddenly realized she wasn't very familiar with Christian belief. She had no clue what her friend was talking about.
Then she launched into another prayer. Forgiveness and deliverance from evil first- which was good, Asuna guessed- and then a request to Mary for prayer, now at and the hour of their deaths. The Mary prayer was repeated thrice, followed by "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen."
Asuna looked around, almost wondering if it was over. Yuuki's eyes were closed, one of the bracelet's beads clasped between her thumb and a finger. "The First Mystery: The Baptism of Christ in the Jordan." This was followed by another repeated prayer.
Slowly, Yuuki worked her way through the whole circumference of her bracelet, doing a Mary prayer on every bead. When she completed a circle, she prayed that they- six elves sitting in a fantasy dungeon- might be saved from Hell, and that all souls might go from Heaven. Then another mystery: The Wedding Feast at Cana.
Asuna took a seat and listened quietly. Did a few checks over her inventory and her messages as Yuuki kept on praying.
The Proclamation of the Kingdom.
The Transfiguration.
The Institution of the Eucharist.
(Asuna did not know what any of that meant.)
Just at the point when it seemed like they were doing some sort of a bit, Yuuki started a new one. Hail Holy Queen. Asuna would agree that this particular dungeon was a vale of tears, although she figured that probably wasn't the exact meaning Yuuki had in mind.
Yuuki finished, put the bracelet back onto her feet and grinned. "Let's get going, huh?" She practically shot down the hallway and they all rushed to follow. Well, the other Sleeping Knights followed at a leisurely pace, Asuna scrambled to catch up. They all knew when it would end, apparently.
After a bit more dungeoneering- it had to be midnight by now- she slid up to Yuuki and asked. "What was that?"
Her mouth dropped into an 'o' shape. "Oh! That's a rosary."
"Like, Christian?"
"Yep," Yuuki chirped, weaving across a series of trapped floor tiles.
"I didn't know you were."
"Yeah. Lotta people don't." She shrugged.
"Do you do it everyday?"
"Unless I forget."
"Why?" Asuna realized, about a moment later, that might have been rude.
"Momma did it with me and my-" she fell silent, before rushing off to lodge her rapier into some unfortunate monster.
That was a way to end a conversation, Asuna supposed.
It became part of routine, really. Any time a gaming session stretched too long, Yuuki would try to pray a rosary before midnight. Sometimes a fight delayed it, but it happened more often than not.
In dungeons, on quiet cliff sides, in fog filled forests and every digital locale you could imagine. Strangely, of all the places Yuuki prayed, the one spot she found awkward were the in game churches and temples.
"Feels a bit weird, doncha think? Not Christian, not even Shinto or Buddhist, just… there."
Maybe she found it a bit odd, just because it wasn't what she was used to, but Asuna would never knock it. She didn't want to hurt her friend…
And she couldn't even argue effectiveness, not after Asuna's first time seeing the boss on Floor 25 sent her into some sort of fit or attack. An attack that got her pulped against a digital wall, which did not help her death game flashbacks.
She had completely botched the run, and she felt like a total mess. Yet something about lying in Yuuki's lap and listening to those repeated prayers helped.
Asuna was holding her. She thought of the Pieta. The Blessed Virgin holding her dead son in her arms, of a blend of all-consuming love and all-consuming pain.
She thought of Jonah. She had heard early Christians liked to put his story on coffins. Three days in the belly, and then life again.
Things were all in order, though. She was surrounded by friends. The hospital had arranged for extreme unction and a last confession. Asuna had come by to visit, and Yuuki had pressed her mother's rosary- faux glass beads and a wooden crucifix, the finer details worn away by years of being grasped- into her friend's hands. Her sister's hands.
"Keep this. Keep my mother's rosary."
Asuna would keep it, and she would keep the Rosario.
One day, Asuna asked Kirito to model a rosary. A specific, real-life, wooden one. Kirito had never known Asuna to be religious, but she was so serious…
What else could he do but boot up a CAD software and get to work?
It took a petition and a lot of strongly worded emails, but eventually, you could find a simple rosary sitting at the base of the Monument of Swordsmen. It sat simply, plainly, beneath the name Yuuki.
The Luminous mysteries were what, eight years before Yuuki was born? No time at all on the grand scale.