Ha no Ie Stage 16: Build a Casket for My Tears

    Kite had gone to the kitchen to find a notice from his mother that she and his little brother had gone to visit their grandparents in the country, and that they would have taken him too, but they never saw him anymore so they figured he wanted to be left alone. His mother had left 20,000 yen on his debit card to buy groceries and whatever else he needed, and she was expecting change back.
    Which was the most communication he had had with either of them in several days, so he didn't mind much.
    His shoulder still hurt, so after forcing a little food into a twisted-up stomach, he went to the bathroom and tried to examine his back in the mirror. There was a dark spot, roughly circular and spreading outward like a malignant growth, on his shirt near the shoulder. It was faintly red.
    He pulled off his shirt --delicately, for how it was stuck to his skin-- and inspected the area. It was definitely blood, caking up along a thin, vertical scar stretched over the bone of his left shoulder blade. It pooled at the base of the scar, the part left still unhealed, and from it Kite could barely see a thin, needle-like protrusion.
    With great care, and a lot of strain upon arms that weren't quite as limber as he'd've hoped, he was able to extract a small, thin, sliver of metal perhaps two inches long.
    He stared at it a while.
    Returning to his computer console, bandaged and starting to feel the effects of over-the-counter painkillers, Kite found that his remaining teammate in The World had vanished without a trace.
    Kite went immediately for the phone.
    He thought, ruefully, how most of that 20,000 yen was going to be used up in making this one call.

    "All right," Lios said, easing back half a step. "Log data has come back from the lower admins. We've got reports from Sora's ISP as well; still hashing out for Sanjuro, because apparently no one in the entire U.S. works on Christmas day. But by the looks of it, it seems like for both of them, they received a telephone call just before incurring game overs."
    "They both had rocket connections?" Helba asked.
    "Sora was on a linear. However, that's still multi-line function. Nothing that would have interrupted gameplay if a call had come through. Hell, it's been a long time since we had lines that did have that disadvantage, so I don't really understand how..."
    "It may be a total coincidence," Helba reminded. "We can't dismiss that possibility. Particularly since we cannot detect whether the two were wearing their interface devices when the calls came. Or when their characters died. Do we know how they died?"
    "Spontaneous game over," Lios answered shortly. "Much akin to what happened once or twice to Kite when his Bracelet was overloaded. So, an automatic log-out."
    "Depending on your perspective. I doubt it felt like a log-out for Tsukasa, back a few years ago."
    "Well, as far as we're aware, those two are still alive, if incredibly hard to reach. Their cohorts are sitting pretty, too. Do you want to Flash Mail them?"
    Helba stared at him. So did Wiseman.
    "...Please don't tell me that just occurred to you," Lios said, too distressed to be amused.

    "Hell-oh."
    Elk looked up, startled. "You got pinged too?" he said to Sora.
    "Me too," said Sanjuro. "It's not Kite, whoever it is."
    >>That'd be me, came the PM on the screens of all three PCs. >>Just cared to see if you were all awake and alive before I launched into a larger speech.
    >>...Helba? Elk guessed.
    >>Correct, the PMs confirmed. Helba added, >>Hello, Sora.
    >>Auntie! Sora said gleefully.
    >>Oh, please don't. Fake cheer doesn't suit you. Though I'm relieved to see you've strayed away from slang in these past few months. Hello, also, Elk and Sanjuro. I hope introductions aren't in order; we've all worked together in the past.
    >>You know what's been happening, don't you, Sanjuro said, not so much an accusation as an observation of unstated fact.
    >>Again right. We've been monitoring, with limited success.
    It was Sora who made the connection first. >>You've got a sysadmin with you there, don't you?
    >>That's right. Lios, specifically.
    Sora was half-tempted to play to Helba's motherly affection for him and complain about Lios's behavior, but decided to put it off for another time. >>You're tracking with the Ziggurat B expansion, aren't you? So you know where Kite is?
    >>Yes. Fortunately, Kite still appears on our grid.
    He kept the action out of his online movement, but in his chair before his computer, Sora exhaled with relief.
    >>There is a concern, however, over whether he will be much longer.
    Sora froze. >>What do you mean? he wrote.
    >>We only know what we see and what the logs tell us, little Sora. And what we are to understand is that you and Sanjuro both escaped absorption by the house only because you were physically removed from the interface, is that right? Understand that we contacted in order to verify these conjectures.
    >>Well, we can't exactly tell you one way or another, Sanjuro replied. >>How could we tell what would have happened if we'd still been connected?
    >>By virtue of the circumstances involving the deaths of the Holloway Team and several others, of course. She added, as an afterthought, >>Don't remark upon our extensive cross-referencing, if you please. I have a whole team of mediocre hackers here that won't leave; I had to find something for them to do.
    >>So, what, said the Heavy Blade, ignoring the latter remark as superfluous, and not even in accordance with Helba's usual manner, >>are you suggesting Kite might be in more danger than we thought? We should call him as soon as possible?
    >>In the interests of keeping the death toll to a minimum, if you please. Yes.
    At which point it dawned on Sora that all eyes, even those belonging to people not currently present, were turning toward him.

    He had come to another edge, and walked along it for a while, taking it as a guiding line in the absence of any other. He didn't fear the shaking of the house. Since Sora's and Sanjuro's exit it had ceased.
    It wasn't long before he reached another edge, creating a corner of the two. Beyond it, nothing. This dynamic reshaping of the internal structure was no longer even signified by the growl, though Kite had a hunch the Creature was still there. Somewhere.
    Very close.
    It was nearly 4:00 by now, or it was by his estimation. He did not dare try to check his desktop. Or the clock by his monitor. Or his watch. He didn't want to leave, or find out what would happen if he did.
    Just keep moving, he said to himself. That's all you can do.

            "Leave me alone, Tsukasa!"
            "Look, I'm sorry, all right?"
            "I don't care how sorry you are! Get out of my life!"
            "Subaru, I love you!"
                                                                                         "That's the first time you told me that."
                                                                                                                                                             Was it?
            "And I promise you: I'll never, ever make you cry again. I swear it on my heart and soul, I love you like air and
            water and the sky. I'm sorry for ever, ever taking someone so precious so much for granted."
            "...Mitsuki..."
    Please, never call me anything else.
                                                "And Sora. How's he been?"
                                                "Well, I haven't been on much so I can't be sure, but..." Crim scratched the back of his
                                                neck. "He's been hanging out with Kite a lot these days. That can be good or bad dep-
                                                ending on who's influencing who. Though I will say one thing to the kid's credit..."
                                                "What's that?"
                                                "The last time I talked to him, he wasn't using leet." Crim lounged further back into his
                                                chair. "A very nice wedding, I have to say. Kind of awkward seeing all these people
                                                you've known for so long suddenly in the flesh. Except the few I don't recognize. Those
                                                kids over there, your classmates?"
"DAMN, they look elitist. I didn't know people actually went so far
as literally turning their noses up like that!"
                                                "Yeah. We're all part of the same study club."
                                                "'Study club'?" Crim asked. He laughed. "School clubs sure are getting more and more
                                                generic, aren't they? Still, though," he added, sobering, "it's good to see you going out
                                                and making some friends."
            "Honestly, Tsukasa-san! You can't actually go out
            wearing that, can you?"
            "What's wrong with it?"
            "You look like a BOY! The haircut's bad enough, but
            why can't you look a little more elegant?"
                                               "I mean, are you trying for the butch lesbo look, or does it come naturally?"
                                "Tada!"
                                Subaru gave a start. "Mitsuki! You're... in a DRESS!"
                                "Does it look bad?"
                                "No, you're beautiful!"
                                                             "...it's just not you..."
"Ugh, I'm so sick of these stupid essays."
"Grading underclassmen again?"
"Tell me, Subaru, are they doing this on purpose,
or are people really this stupid?"
Smile. "Not everyone's as gifted as you, Mitsuki."
"They ought to be, dammit. If I can manage, so
can they."                                                                                       "Isn't that a bit of a high standard?"
                                Well, they ought to be! I'm not so special.
                                                                                                        "Not everyone is a Renaissance man."
                                Since when was being equally good at
                                everything some spectacular feat? I just
                                apply myself.
                                                                                                        "It's not that simple for some..."
                                                     "The problem is I think she got that way because
                                                        she's no longer afraid of people."
                "Now, instead of being afraid of everyone, it's like she wants everyone to be afraid of her."
That's a lie! How do I intimidate anyone?
                            "What a dazzling intellect that Tsukasa has."
                            "Oh, I agree. She'll go far."
        "Why do you always have to humiliate your classmates, you little shit? We know you know the answer. Shut up."
"Calm down, Mitsuki!"
                                        "I'm sooooo envious, Tsukasa-senpai!"
                                                                                                        "You know what I'm talking about, Sakuma-san.
                                                                                                        You understand, don't you?"
                                                                                                        "...Mitsuki, I'm a writer. Part of my job is to write
                                                                                                        for others to understand. I can't expect everyone
                                                                                                        to rise to my level. If they can't understand what
                                                                                                        I'm trying to say, I've failed, not them."
                                                                                     "It shouldn't have to be that way!"
            "Little kids should watch their language!"
                                     "No. You didn't just-- In front of Kite--!"
            "You--"
            "Do you want me to wash your mouth out with soap?"
                                     "Kite is... He was the only one I had left!
                                            Why did you take that from me?!"
            "What gives you any right--"
            "Go toddle off now and let the adults talk, huh? Oniisan
            and oneechan can take care of things from here."
                                             "What happened to you?!"
                                                                                                   I started hating you again, Sora.
                                 "I thought you said you'd be my friend!"
                                                                                                   I thought you'd learn to keep out of trouble!
            "Why is she torturing him like that?"
            You don't get it, Kite.

"No," said Kite, opening his eyes and turning to look at her. "I
don't think you get it."

    "What are you talking about?"
    Sora flailed. "I told you! There was no answer!"
    "Are you sure you dialed the right number?" Sanjuro asked, for the third or fourth time.
    "Yes I'm sure!"
    What did these guys take him for? His heart had been beating so fast it felt like it was either going to explode or spontaneously combust, whichever came first; did they think he was relieved that no one had picked up? He was going to get a brain aneurysm at this rate.
    Why did they even have to ask him? Why him? Did it look like he was enjoying this?
    "Someone should have picked up," Elk insisted. "He has a family, doesn't he?"
    "They could've been out!"
    "At four in the morning?!"
    "I-- Um--" Sora gave up, throwing up his hands. "This is one of those things where everything I say is wrong, isn't it?"
    >>Please, stop it, Helba said. Somehow, she had managed to come across annoyed even in text. >>Sora's dialing was right according to user info records. We even tried it ourselves to verify.
    >>If you could call him, why did you make me do it?! Sora demanded.
    >>He would have responded better to you, the hacker answered simply. >>In any event, he isn't answering. And although this is taking on a slight supposition, there seems to be but one conclusion we can draw from this.
    Sora reacted to this only by falling silent. He lowered his gaze, coming to stare at nothing.
    >>You don't mean... Elk began.
    >>I'm afraid so.
    The Twin Blade growled, unable to block out the words even though they annoyed him. "And everyone's just fine with that, huh?"
    Elk and Sanjuro glanced back at him, surprised. "What?" said Elk. "Sora--"
    But before either PC could react, Sora had already gone into a run, bounding up the steps to the porch. To the door.
    "Sora!" Sanjuro shouted, starting after. But by then the Twin Blade had already swung open the door and was running full-speed into the house.
    >>You best go after him, Helba told the remaining two, after they hesitated for a moment. >>Don't worry for things out here. I'll be watching.
    >>Thanks, Elk said awkwardly, backing away a few steps before accompanying Sanjuro through the door.

    Helba refocused her gaze, turning her attention to Lios and Wiseman, still poring over the map grid. "Are we detecting any abnormal activity?"
    "You mean, besides from the Player Killer kid," Lios clarified.
    "Clearly," Helba said, obviously irritated but not enough to start up a row at a crucial moment. "Well?"
    "Dungeon interior looks normal," Wiseman reported, less easily distracted than the sysadmin. "It--"
    "Stop right there," Helba interrupted. "What did you say?"

            Tsukasa froze.
            "This... this isn't a memory," she said numbly. "Am I-- Are you--"
        Kite shrugged. "Who knows. Morganna's bound to have copies of me all over her system.
        It would make sense seeing as she already has a bunch of copies of Aura propagated. I'm
        probably not real."
    "This is a hallucination."
    "Could be that too. They say that about sensory deprivation, don't they? And that's this place to a tee." Kite glanced around them, though at what, Tsukasa could only guess. The loading dock screen was blank once more. The last of the ghosts had faded away. Only Kite remained. "Do you think Holloway cracked because of that?"
    "What did you mean, I don't get it?"
    "The way you deal with people is sick, Tsukasa."
    The Wavemaster scowled. "At least I'm honest!"
    "I'm honest too. But your kind of honesty is malignant. Like a tumor. It's your fault Sora fell in the labyrinth."
    The scene that Tsukasa had witnessed replayed in her head, as biting and stinging as it was the first time. When she heard the screams echo in her mind, she half-wondered whether Kite --whoever Kite was at the moment-- was hearing it too.
    She realized belatedly that she was crying.
    "It is, isn't it..."
    "It's your fault he doesn't trust anyone. It's your fault he's screwed up. People can't be reset. You fuck them up and they stay that way."
    Sora hanging over empty space, Sora's blade snapping, Sora hanging on with one hand, Sora falling--
    Sora falling--
    Sora falling--
    Replay again, and again, and again, faster, almost hypnotic, like the drawing force of a waterfall--
    Quit it--
    Quit--
    "Quit trying to scapegoat someone else!" she shouted, snapping her head up. The sudden counterattack caused Kite to take a step back, shocked. "I've tried! I tried as much as I could!"
    "Then your most isn't enough, is it?" Kite shot back angrily, undeterred. "He does something to piss you off, you just attack. How does that help anything?"
                                        "We're friends... right?"
                                        "R...right!"
                                                                    "Who was that girl I tried to PK earlier? Mistral?"
                                                                                  "Wait, wait. You tried PKing someone?"
                                                                  "Well, she wasn't giving me her member address..."
                                                                                                                                "SORA!"
                                                                                                                                "What?!"
    "It doesn't matter!" Tsukasa said sharply, clamping her eyes shut. "Everything here is just trying to trick me. Nothing of what I see here is really real. I've probably dreamt it all up!"
    "Why would you bother doing something like that?" Kite challenged. "What purpose could it possibly serve? You're just hiding from reality!"
    "You're hiding from reality!" Tsukasa roared. "We're all hiding from reality! That's the entire point! What's why we play this goddamn game!"

    There was no hallway leading to the dead end room.
    Rather, there was, but it was the first one that had always existed, long before Kite's arrival. The door that had lead into the corridor with the inexplicable minute now opened into nothing more than a closet space, perhaps two or three feet deep at most. It was even painted the same gray-white as the rest of the house. Sora and the other two even gave a short, mostly humorless laugh at the sight of it.
    They split up and searched the rest of the rooms, each taking a separate floor. The children's room, the study, and all the other cute nicknames given to the various rooms were all without feature, just the same as they had been upon initial exploration.
    And so they checked again, rechecking and double-checking rooms, occasionally calling out, futily, the name of their lost comrade, growing more desperate as their searches again and again yielded no result.
    Sora placed his hands against a wall, perhaps in some vain hope that the pressure would unlock something, make something give away, but things just weren't so simple.
    And watching the ceiling above him, Sora's hand curled into a fist and slammed against the wall, as the memory of an almost forgotten conversation drifted up through his thoughts.
    "If the randomizing matrices keep changing," Wiseman had said, "it's possible that eventually any exit that might have existed in some form will disappear entirely. In such an event, it'd be safe to assume that our options had completely run out."
    "Say someone did get trapped in the house, in the way you're talking about," Sora had said in response. "Is it at all possible to get the person out again?"
    He backed up from the wall a few paces and gave it a brutal, wild, furious kick.
    "No," Wiseman had said.
    "Goddammit, Kite!" the Sora of the present shouted, loud enough that his two comrades elsewhere in the house could also hear. "GodDAMN it."

    "Answer me," Tsukasa said, leaning on her staff for support. It was growing difficult to stand; a fatigue was setting in and she had no idea what could possibly be the cause. "Why do you care about Sora so much?"
    "Why do you?"
    "Because-- he saved me, and it cost him so much." This had never been the response she'd given in the past, when the question had been posed her. A part of her ached as she confessed it. "And when I found him again, he wasn't mine anymore."
    "He's no one's."
    "Wrong. He's yours. I'll bow to that now, I guess..." She swayed slightly on her feet. "I guess I understood that for a long time, even if I didn't realize it. I do now. Back when you two met at the Unison Hanabi party, of course you clicked instantly. Of course he'd remember you. I only got him into danger. You rescued him. I couldn't do that."
    She bowed her head, eyes cast toward her own shows, the last hint of Kite visible disappearing behind her bangs. "Still, though, in a way... It's like you only ruined him further. Maybe if you two hadn't become such good friends he'd never have been involved in this. Maybe he'd've stopped playing and been a normal kid again. You took that away from him. You took it away and you brought him into this place and you let it wreck what havoc it would on his already-haunted mind. You've... destroyed him, haven't you? He's yours, but you don't really care. You don't understand."
    Tsukasa swallowed. Painfully. Let tears fall freely from her eyes, falling straight to the ground instead of rolling down her cheeks, her head at such an angle. "I heard him scream. Heard his mind scream, when he fell. And it wasn't me that he was screaming at...." She began to rise, roughly wiping away the tears with the sleeve of her shirt. "...It was you."
    But Kite, or the thing like Kite, was gone. Tsukasa was alone in the void.
    Yet she knew, or suspected, or thought madly that though the figure was gone, he was still near enough to hear. And finally at a proper conclusion she could understand and reconcile with internally, she was not going to stop.
    "It's you!" she shouted at the darkness. "You're the reason he fell! You never listened, you kept bringing him into this place, you kept putting him at risk! He was your responsibility and you let him fall!"
    The back of her neck prickled. She spun around on a heel, but there was nothing. It felt like a game of cat and mouse.
    "Do you know where he is now? Do you know if he's anywhere at all? What have you done to him, Kite?! What did you do?"
    A hint of red, briefly, out of the corner of one eye. But it was gone when she turned to face it.
    "Where is he? Where's Sora?! You bastard, you killed him, didn't you!
    "You killed him!
    "You're a murderer!
    "BRING HIM BACK!"
    And quite suddenly, as she turned, Kite came into her vision. He appeared differently, surrounded by the glow of a regeneration spell, much more solid and darker, most of his body a silhouette thanks to the spell, but it was him. Undoubtedly, it was him.
    And he was scared.
    Tsukasa swung, the head of her staff catching Kite across the shoulder. He cried out, more of surprise than actual damage inflicted, and staggered back. But Tsukasa had already dropped the staff and gone into a run.
    He landed heavily on his back, wheezing with the air knocked out of him, breathing made all the more difficult with Tsukasa pinning him down. The Twin Blade tried, mostly in vain, to shield himself as she landed blow after blow, not caring for strength or strategy but the pure and simple violence of the action, striking anything that came into view, anything at all through eyes clouded with tears.
    "Bring him back! Bring Sora back!"
    Kite may have shouted in protest, but the words were lost now. She was deaf to it, her ears narrowing in on only the dull, damp blows of fist against flesh, the copper scent of blood and the saline of tears.
    "BRING SORA BACK!"
    Reflexes left dormant began to kick in for the Twin Blade, or desperation called for him to forego pacifity. When she struck out her fist to punch him again, he caught it by the wrist.
    "...he's all right...
                             ...really...
                                            ...I swear it..."
    And suddenly, a wealth of sensory input she had tuned out before hit Tsukasa all at once, so forceful that she sank back, eyes wide.
    The blood on her hands was not graphical. It was real.
    The floor beneath them was solid, black stone.
    The PC beneath her was real, no longer a hallucination.
    It was very, very cold.
    "Oh my god," she whispered, sliding off onto the freezing black stone. She watched, unblinking, as the prone Kite slowly stood up and coughed, clutching at his chest. He spit out blood, and a tooth. Overall, his face suffered little disfiguring damage, and what was there was mostly on the part of when her nails had cut in where a fist should have been. "You're..."
    "I tell you again, Sora's all right," Kite, ignoring or not realizing the change in Tsukasa's awareness. "Please believe me."
    "...I believe you..."
    "And yes," Kite added. "I am. At least, I think so."
    Tsukasa looked around them, awestruck though there was not much to see. The fact that the air around them was, in fact, air, and there was a discernible floor, when none had existed for her before, was terrifying enough. "How did I...?"
    "That Power of yours...?"
    "No. No, I'm not... I started out on the dock screen. How did I end up here?"
    "Are you still outside?"
    Tsukasa turned her head toward him sharply. "What?"
    "Can you feel whether you're in front of a terminal or not?" Kite clarified, looking annoyed, as if he were having to explain it to a child.
    She hesitated. "I can, but... at the same time, I... don't want to find out..." She glanced at him, at the blood he was presently mopping away with the arm of his glove, and seemed to think of something upon looking at her own hand. She bit down on it.
    "Well?" Kite asked.
    "It's... a little, but..."
    Kite nodded. "You're in transition. There's still hope for you." With a small grunt, he pulled himself to his feet, a little increment at a time. Once upright, he extended a hand down. After a while, Tsukasa got the idea and accepted his assistance to stand up.
    "You're being awfully nice in the circumstances," she couldn't help but remark.
    "Would it pay for me to be an ass?" Kite pointed out. "If it makes you feel any better, you're not high on my list of people I'd liked to see right now. But you're not the worst, either, so don't worry."
    "Who is the worst?" Tsukasa asked, hoping it would be polite enough conversation.
    Kite smiled shyly at her. "To tell you the truth? BlackRose."

    "I don't understand," Lios said, watching the grid. A second dot had appeared in close proximity to Kite's, and if the kanji over it was any indication, the rules of programming as they knew it had just come crashing to a halt.
    "Did she warp?" Mia asked.
    "Doubtful. When Tsukasa moves, we usually see an influx in data transmitting directly between system nodes. We didn't detect that."
    >>Hey Auntie, came a PM from Sora over the line. Helba had set PMs to auto-send all to those in the area, a function much akin to placing a call on speaker. >>You guys still have Kite on your screen, don't you?
    >>Yes, Sora, Helba answered calmly.
    >>If you guys know where he is, can't you just go in after him to get him out?
    >>Don't be stupid, Lios responded, before Helba could type a reply. >>If it were that simple, don't you think we'd have done that already?
    >>Who is this? Sora came back, clearly bristling at the remarks. >>Lios?
    >>The dynamic nature of the house prevents direct transportation, even to sysadmins, Lios went on. >>The dungeon is sharing filespace on a thousand different points of origin. Character data would get ripped apart trying to teleport to one specific location. That's why Tsukasa's giving us a headache right now.
    >>...Tsukasa's in there too?
    "The kid's running out of siblings," Lios remarked dryly.

    The first thing Kite did upon setting out walking again was offer to cast Rig Saem on Tsukasa. She refused, indicating she had the spell herself. But, she added, with conditions being what they were and her item stores not being designed in preparation of a setting like this, she didn't know how long her light would last.
    And so they walked.
    Soon Tsukasa found herself short on breath. Kite kept a brisk pace, and neither the real Tsukasa nor her game incarnation was physically fit to keep up forever. She at first resigned herself to falling one step being Kite, then two. By the third, the tip of her staff was dragging on the ground. She could no longer keep track of how far they had walked, with no visible change in their surroundings.
    She almost didn't register the movement when Kite, without an apparent shift in his pace, ducked down and courteously took the heavy wand from her hands, and hefted it over his shoulder.
    "You don't need to--"
    "I'm fine."
    The cuts across his face that she had inflicted had all but healed now, dried smears of blood all that remained in some places. This didn't have the effect to weaken him, but rather made him seem more alive. The only indication that he was. His eyes were dead, and though he kept up a good speed he seemed heavily worn by fatigue. Weighed down, not just by her staff and that inexplicable case strapped to his back --peculiarity of anime designs always seemed plausible until tested for practical use--, but also by the cold, and the monotony of their surroundings. And probably other things as well. Tsukasa could no longer hear thoughts here, but if what she had encountered before qualified for anything, Kite's inner monologue was not a happy place to be right now.
    "So... BlackRose," she said, after the silence was starting to make her nervous. "She looks like Mimiru... right?"
    "She'd probably say Mimiru's the one who looks like her," Kite said, trying to smile, though it was clearly painful.
    "Still... She and you, weren't you... well... best friends?" she wheezed. She was beginning to wonder whether ending the silence was so wise, when she was already tired from walking. Well, it was a half-jog for her.
    "I thought that, but..." Kite took a long breath. "Then she got into university, and she stopped playing. Said in her inbox that she didn't have time, what with homework and all that."
    "You believe that?"
    A slight, almost imperceptible change in Kite's steps, before they returned to normal. "Well..."
    "I don't know where she's attending, but it can't be much more advanced than the prep school I go to right now. Even with clubs and things, how do you just... forget people you care about...?"
    "You don't access anymore either, so how can you complain about that?" The words were there, but the apathetic way in which Kite said them removed any accusatory tone. He was merely pointing things out.
    Still, Tsukasa's stomach gave a twist. "I just... well... It was my wife more than anything else. She didn't play anymore, so I kind of... didn't have any reason to stick around."
    "Hm," was Kite's response. He glanced off to his left, though at what Tsukasa could only guess. "It must be nice..."
    "What is?"
    "To have someone that can dictate your choices so much. I don't think anyone will ever influence me so much that I stop doing what I want to do."
    "You still like playing, even in your state? What's there to play for?"
    "Didn't you know? I'm The World's One and Only Arbitrary Cartographer." He laughed a little at this, as from an in-joke he didn't expect her to get. And she didn't. When he glanced back, he caught her gaze out of the corner of his eye. "You're different than I remember you."
    Tsukasa tilted her head slightly to the side. "What do you mean?"
    "You're more like you used to be. I know I only met you a few times back then..." He smiled again, clearly trying to put some earnest effort into it. "But when I met you last time, you were like a completely different person."
    "..."
    "Sorry. It's not my place to say, is it?"
    "...A lot of things have happened," she said at length. "I'm... not the person a lot of people used to know."
    Silence descended again, a voluntary one this time for both parties. Kite did not seem to mind, so Tsukasa resolved with herself not to mind either. She had more or less settled into step two paces behind him, resigning herself to his leadership as they continued to progress through the house, even as above them

                                                                        wn                                gl
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er ghosts in his mind, reached out an apprehensive hand and grasped the handle, and just a

s cautiously turned it, to a click so solidly real that it gave both of them a start. He pushed it open slowly, unkno

wn hinges giving way silently, into a small, square room that was as dark as all other structures Kite had seen inside the house,

but for one crucial difference: from the door way there was a drop of perhaps three meters, and on the left wall, springing up as a thick banded coil, was the Staircase, spiraling up and out through a large gap in the opposing wall.
    It seemed, for reasons unknown, that the room existed on its side, and that the floor below them was not actually the floor at all, but a wall.
    "I hate to do it, but..." Kite said quietly, almost a murmur too low for Tsukasa to hear, "...I'm going to hack my weapons. We need the light."
    "If you could do that earlier..." Tsukasa began.
    Kite shook his head. "This place doesn't sustain illegal data. Any hacks we use here just get eaten up. Just the same as everything else."
    He initiated the hack. He didn't understand precisely how he was able to, without menus or a desktop to access, but he could feel the script running. He felt the numbers flying through him, coursing through small, controlled channels, unable to understand the sensation except, perhaps, like water felt like running over your body, except on the inside. It pooled into the small daggers held in his belt on either hip, grew hot as from a furnace heat, then quickly dissipated.
    When he reached down with his left hand --the right one still occupied holding Tsukasa's staff-- it was to touch the cold steel handle of a flashlight.
    It feels more real than it looks, he thought with something approaching amusement, clicking it on. He cast the beam of light, thick and powerful after having become to accustomed to the weak glow of spells, first over the featureless wall/floor below them, then over to the left wall from which the Sideways Staircase protruded. He moved the light to travel up the Stairwell's length, to where it disappeared out of the gap on the other side, and further until his light could pick up nothing else in the darkness.
    "Looks like a long climb," he remarked plainly. He did not notice Tsukasa's calls for attention until he felt her tugging on his sleeve. He looked over at her as if wondering suddenly why she was there.
    "What did you say before?" Tsukasa asked. "Did you say this place destroys illegal data?"
    "Yeah."
    "Kite," she said, voice bordering on desperation. "We're illegal data."
    The Twin Blade hesitated. When he had formulated his response, he was cut off just as he began to utter it. The growl reemerged.
    The growl came, and it was fierce, animal, loud, and angry. And it was close.
    The two PCs spun around, eyes going down into the tunnel from whence they had just come. Kite's hand that held the flashlight trembled as he tried to lift it toward the origin of the noise, shaking so violently that he soon gave up the action, holstering the flashlight instead and using the hand instead to take hold of Tsukasa by the wrist.
    "Come on," he said.
    "But--"
    Too late, as the Wavemaster                                             axis, depositing them on the
                                    was pulled                                    turned on its                      left
                                        forward, thr                            suddenly                            wall.
                                            ough the do                      he room                            With
                                                oor out in                    ty of t                            the Spi
                                                  to the op                gravi                             ral Stai
                                                   en air, f                the                                   rcase e
                                                    alling d              as                                         xtendi
                                                       own              p                                               ng out
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                                                         ar            g                                                  hem into
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                                                            gr    nd                                                ngn
                                                               ou                                                      es
                                                                                                                            s

"We can't stay here," Kite said, sharp and
far too loud, shouting over a growl that was drawing
ever closer. Their eyes traveled up the coiling length of the Stair-
case. "There's not an awful lot of options..." he told Tsukasa apprehensively.
She nodded, as above them,
the doorway from which they had entered melted
away, spilling out to the entire wall until it was not even the black
stone of the house anymore but true darkness, pouring down from the opening
like blood from a wound. Spreading like an infection, like cancer. And by extension,
like a virus.

    The map broke.
    "Damn!" Lios shouted, his character freezing for a moment as his real self before the computer monitor shielded his face. "That's REALLY not good."
    "What did you do?" Helba asked, in an accusatory tone. "What's the matter?"
    "My computer's spewing sparks, that's what's the matter!"
    "H'rm," said the hacker, an expression which in other people was usually displayed by raised voices and cries of 'are you all right?!'. "Shut down quickly. Go."
    "But--"
    "Lios, I really don't believe you care to fry your entire system. You can trust me for ten minutes. Go."
    He may have obeyed, or it could have been that his computer could no longer take present conditions, but in either case his character model soon glitched and fizzed out, and was gone.
    "...Pig-head. He's far too stubborn at times."
    Helba turned her attention to the remnants of the map still lying on an upturned crate. It was little more than oddly colored shreds of polygons now, an assortment of jagged spikes not unakin to those grow-your-own-rock kits occasionally given to children when parents can't think of anything else to buy them. Usually trash data of this kind was immediately taken to a dump server to await deletion. However, Net Slum was such a dump server, so the broken map had nowhere to go.
    She examined it for a few minutes, its last recorded image still visible, if badly skewed, across its surface. It was the grid of the house interior, but it was not a grid anymore. All vertical and horizontal lines had been warped, replaced with a centrifugal coil. No figures could be seen.
    Well. This was bad, wasn't it.
    "Bith," she said, in a loud, clear voice.
    A dark-clad Blademaster who had been mingling among the other hackers milling about the field looked up. Only the lower half of his face was visible beneath his helmet, enough to see him crack a wicked grin to put Mephistopheles to shame.
    "Yes, Mistress Helba?"
    "Your attempts in acquiring a bootleg of Ziggurat B were successful, I presume."
    "I couldn't wait five days," Bith said, by way of confirmation. "The mod was asking way too much for the copy, too..."
    "Admin privileges?"
    "Fully patched."
    "The map?"
    "Running."
    "Good boy."
    "Nn-hnn," said her subordinate gleefully. "System's running very hot. Poor bastard sysadmins don't know how to overclock, though. It'll take a lot more than something like this to melt my freezetank. Oh em gee," he added, sounding like he was on the verge of forgetting unless he mentioned it, "you know that 'abnormal activity' you told Wiseman to look out for...?"

    >>Are you reading this? came Helba's PM across the line.
    >>Yes, Elk said, after a pause in which neither of his comrades had moved to answer.
    >>Listen carefully, she said. >>You have to get out. Right now.
    Elk started to write, >>But Kite is--
    Helba's subsequent PM stopped him before he sent it. >>I realize the situation, but this is very important. The area you're standing on is growing increasingly unstable. If things persist at this rate the entire field will be volatile in a matter of minutes. There is no time for questions. Just go. NOW!
    Sanjuro and Elk obeyed, abandoning the room in which they had been standing in wait. Elk, however, stopped by the doorway leading to the main hall, turning back.
    "Sora!" he called to the Twin Blade, still standing by a wall and watching the ceiling for some purpose that could only be guessed at. "Didn't you read? We need to get out of here!"
    "You go on ahead," Sora replied, voice a monotone.
    "No," Sanjuro said firmly.
    >>Sora-kun, Helba said to him, in private PM. >>Whatever your sentiments for Kite, he would not want you to act foolishly.
    <<What do you mean, 'my sentiments'? I'm just a kid; I don't know big words like that.
    >>Please, Sora.
    "Sora!" Elk was crying, by the doorway.
    "Come on, Sora!" Sanjuro was shouting.
    >>Don't dishonor his memory, Sora. Or Tsukasa's. If they mean anything to you at all.
    <<...Don't talk about them like they're dead.
    He began to turn around, much to the relief of his cohorts, when the house gave a sudden jolt. Sora staggered, clutching at the wall with a hand to avoid falling forward.
    >>Get going! Helba shouted in open-PM. >>Get to the field! Hurry!

    The first thing she smelled was the stench of cigarettes.
    A stench that had compacted one layer upon another for years, developed into its own personality. A personality that then became synonymous with other things. Fingers typing madly at 3 AM. Shy, furtive looks. Just a little bit of pain behind the eyes.
    The next thing was the feel of the air. Crisp, dry cold, like a walk-in freezer. There was frost in her hair and on the seat she sat in.
    The tears streaked down her face were the only things not frozen.
    Finally she became aware of a warmth, the only warmth, a burning brand of hot, bare flesh of a pair of arms wrapped around her midsection, a pair of shoulders and a buried face shaking into her lap and hot tears seeping through her dress onto her thigh.
    Slowly, Tsukasa lifted a hand. The muscles of her arm creaked with disuse, ached as if with atrophy, the same sensation she had experienced years ago after awakening from a coma.
    The joints in her hand her slow to move, but with her palm she was able to get a solid leverage on the visor connected to her face and pull it up, like a pair of sunglasses, to come to rest on the top of her head.
    Her eyes saw nothing at first. Then, slowly, shapes appeared out of the featureless darkness. A desk, a stuffed ashtray, a keyboard and a cordless mouse. A monitor with the screen glowing, the words "GAME OVER" blocked across it in large red print.
    She looked down, at the source of the warmth she had felt. And with the same hand that had pulled the visor from her eyes, she numbly stroked Subaru Nazuka's hair.
    A dull bump as Subaru snapped her head up, hitting against the hand, giving Tsukasa enough of a hint to retract it before it caused more damage. And so the next thing Tsukasa saw was Subaru's eyes. And the warm shudder that went up and down her spine reminded her of the first time they had met.
    She even looks beautiful when she cries, Tsukasa realized.
    She...
    You...
    I thought I'd never...
    Subaru sat back onto her knees. Her wheelchair was gone, who knew where, but standing on her knees she came up nearly level with Tsukasa sitting in the chair. She very rarely was at even height with Tsukasa, outside of bed, and to witness her like this now, here, was a most pleasant little jolt.
    Tsukasa was crying again, but she neither noticed nor cared.
    "Subaru," she whimpered, voice hoarse and almost gone. She reached out automatically, wrapping her arms around the older girl, kissing her once, again, a dozen times, each apologizing for a different thing.
    "Mitsuki--"
    "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry."
    "Sweetheart--"
    "I love you. Oh god, I'm so sorry for everything. I don't-- I don't want to leave you ever again."
    "You won't have to. Oh, Mitsuki..."
    It was a few minutes later when Ryo Sakuma appeared in the doorway, having just returned from the kitchen to phone the ambulance. It had taken too long in finding the key to the study, so they had opted for breaking the door down instead, and small splinters of wood lay by his feet. He was still trying to figure out who he should bill for it when he stopped dead in his tracks.
    He exhaled silently, letting the relief wash over him.
    He didn't move to interrupt them. He might have been 'old-fashioned' as Tsukasa had once accused him, but for every precept a human has there is bound to be one example that transcends that standard. And for the life of him, Sakuma could not remember ever seeing a couple, anywhere, of any type, that had ever seemed so...
    ...what could be the word...
    "Sakuma-san," came Tsukasa's voice, drawing him out of his mental wandering. "I'm so sorry..."
    "It had to have been important."
    "Yes. And..." She looked between Subaru's face and his. "There's still something I need to do."
    Sakuma shook his head. "What could you possibly...?"
    "There's a person I need to find. It's very important. Do you still have Lios's number stored?"
    Too puzzled to understand the direction to this, Sakuma stammered, "Yes, but--"
    "Mitsuki!" Subaru cried, as Tsukasa stood up abruptly from the chair, not caring for the state of her stiff limbs. She had not moved much more than her fingers in the past --she checked the clock-- six hours, but now wasn't the time to get hung up on details. Despite her lover's protest, she crouched down and gathered the older woman up in her arms, holding her abreast as a groom might do in carrying his wife over the threshold of their new house.
    "Go on, get her chair," Tsukasa told Sakuma, who was still frozen to the spot. "I'm not that strong. And then I'll need to go get my coat. Do you have a bike I can borrow?"
    "Hold on," Sakuma said firmly. "You're not going anywhere. You might think you're all right now, but you were unconscious for well over an hour. Just wait until the ambulance comes--"
    "There's no time for that!" she interrupted, bustling past him through the doorway, taking extra care that Subaru didn't hit anything, and exiting into the upper-story hallway. Subaru's wheelchair wasn't around. Probably, Sakuma had carried her up the stairs himself, because if the lack of a roar downstairs was any indication, the party had long since finished.
    "For god's sake, Mitsuki, put me down!" Subaru pleaded. And it was finally to her that Tsukasa obeyed, carefully lowering her down onto the top step of the stairwell. "Please, honey, I know you probably think this is very important, but we just got you back! Have a little consideration for your foster father and me, if not yourself. What's so important that you need to go out biking at five in the morning?"
    "There's a person I need to find," Tsukasa repeated. "If I told you it was a matter of life or death for someone very important, would you believe me?"

    The three PCs had only just exited through the door of the house when Sora, still standing on the front porch, stopped and turned on a heel, facing the shutting entrance.
    "What are you doing, Sora?!" Elk demanded, stopping halfway across the grass to the spawn point from which all players originally warped in.
    "KITE!" Sora shouted, not heeding the Wavemaster's cries. He called again, "Kite, you're in there, aren't you?"
    Sanjuro approached him, hoping to draw him away. But when he extended his hand to grab Sora by the wrist, he jumped back, just barely escaping a swinging blade.
    "I'm not leaving," Sora growled, fixing the Heavy Blade with a gaze out of the corner of one eye. "You two can bunny out if you like. But I heard him. I know he's still in there."
    "You... heard him?" Sanjuro repeated in disbelief. "Where? How?"
    "You don't really believe me," Sora said darkly. "You'll think I'm lying."
    "No!" Sanjuro insisted. "Just-- tell me!"
    Sora half-turned, to look at the samurai full-on. He arched an eyebrow. This was the limit of his action, but Sanjuro felt he was being put through a rigorous interrogation under that glare.
    "In the walls," the Twin Blade said simply. "Three short. Three long. Three short."
    "...you mean..."

Tsukasa had disappeared. And when that happened, so did the barrier.
Before Kite had treated the barrier as a prevention, an unnecessary obstruction. But after witnessing Tsukasa's demise, to find that wall dissolved suddenly caused Kite to realize what it had been protecting him from, in turn.

    "It's nearly six now," Elk said, after checking his watch. "The sun will be up soon. What are we going to do then?"
    "I don't know," said Sanjuro vacantly. "I wish I did."
    Now, when Sora tried the handle of the door, they found it to be locked.

    "I'm sorry, Mistress Helba," Bith moaned. "I was careless."
    "You did all you could," she said quickly, a little distressed he was still here. "Now shut down before your motherboard melts. You're out for tonight, Bith."
    The Blademaster nodded sadly. "Yes, my lady."
    When he had logged out, Helba exhaled sharply. She took a few breaths.
    That was it, then, wasn't it. The map had broken even Bith's system, which meant that Wiseman had been right after all. The Adamantine Code presented the house at its "absolute point." This was the state for which it would constantly be reassembling itself to gradually become. The closer its internal map came to this point, the more data concentrated into one point. The harder the abuse upon the system viewing it.
    They had been able to theorize that the house reached "absolute point" much quicker in the presence of illegal data.
    They'd also established that Kite was as illegal as data came in The World.
    Helba shunned attachment to others she met online, and the few that became dear to her were treasured. Bith was one. Sora was another. Kite was one also.
    Her heart ached. It bled with guilt.
    >>ping, came a PM in her inbox.
    <<Lios? she asked, taken aback.
    >>im on cell. cant tlk 2 long.
    <<Your system's dead, then?
    >>as a doorstop. but hve news.
    It took several minutes for him to relay this information, as constricted as text messaging from a mobile phone was. Helba had to smile at the effort. Lios was clearly frantic in trying to convey his message as quickly as possible. She could tell his excitement from the number of typos.
    >>She thinks that's a viable solution, then? she said at last. >>Admittedly, it's not something we would have tried. But will she make it in time?
    >>who nos, Lios replied. >>im hopign.
    >>Why, Lios, Helba exclaimed, relieved. >>I never thought I'd hear you say.
    >>keep it quiet.

    "Are you really all right with this?" Sakuma asked Nazuka, after Tsukasa had gone. "She just seems to be doing the same thing to you that she did before."
    But Subaru Nazuka shook her head. "I don't think, no. She's changed. Something's happened to her. I know she's all right now. I can't really explain it..."
    "I think I understand."
    "It's like-- She's so all right, she's able to do this one last thing. If she wasn't, I think she would have stayed with me."
    Sakuma puzzled at this. "I suppose..." He sighed, giving up and resigning himself to the other thing weighing on his mind. "I should have insisted on driving her. No one should be out in this kind of weather, especially someone in her condition."

    The house roared, its exterior creaking and straining against system properties keeping it in place. It dared at any moment to devour the crucial bit of code keeping the structure intact, to break away the skeleton and mesh that held it together, to shatter polygons and reach out with raw streams of surging data.
    It was not a building. It was not strings of numbers built up into a code. By whatever capacity, the house had become a living thing.
    Sora did not move even as the door that had locked him out began to meld together and burn to black, spreading outward in all directions across wall and floor. There as a distinct chill coming from the depths of that shadow, acting as a drawing force.
    He reached out his hand--
    Vision blurred, as he was bodily pulled back with Elk and Sanjuro both grabbing hold of one shoulder. He was knocked down onto his back, blinking dumbly at the leaves of trees and wondering briefly what had just happened.
    "Idiot," Sanjuro was saying wildly. "Do you want to get sucked in?"
    Sora rose back up onto his elbows and looked past the three of them. The dark smear that was rapidly encompassing the face of the house was spreading toward them as well, and had just eaten up the area of the porch on which he had, until just recently, been standing.
    He climbed to his feet, saying nothing.
    "We need to get out of here," Elk insisted. "If nothing else, Helba will be getting Lios to lock this field soon. We'll be trapped if we don't go."
    "You two can go whenever you like," Sora said, his expression unreadable. "I'm not going to leave. Do you understand that? Not until the very last second."
    Not for their lives had either Elk or Sanjuro ever heard such absolute resolve in the Twin Blade's voice. It was almost enviable that he could feel so strongly about something.
    It was almost like...
    "Sora," Sanjuro said quietly, barely heard over the increasing pitch of the house's screams. "You and Kite, do you--"

    "This thunder is getting terribly bad," Helba said, returning from an observation out her apartment window. "If this persists we may have to cut power."
    "You'd actually consider doing that?" Mia asked in disbelief. "Now?"
    "If we were to suffer a black-out, we'll be wiped out anyway," Helba pointed out. "Much more preferable to shut down manually with all files secured than to be hit unexpectedly. Who knows how much damage the right electrical current could do?"
    "You'd try to hold on as long as you could, though, right?"
    "Until the last possible second," Helba agreed.
    Sora, I think, had the right idea...

"I don't believe this," said Kite. Tsukasa nodded in silent agreement. Upon reaching the landing, they had arrived on an entire new level of the house. This was a flat plane, narrow, like a catwalk, and ending abruptly at a wall. And set into the wall was something new. After they had recovered from their flight, the two had turned their gaze to the sight and had found it impossible to look away, but just as impossible to move closer to it, seeming to share the strange, ambling fear that it might disappear if they approached. Kite thought at first to screencap it, remembering only belatedly that he had no keyboard to take the picture with. He considered asking Tsukasa for the favor, but then considered that they didn't know what would happen if they tried screencapping it anyway. Was it like the Adamantine Code? When Kite did take a step closer to it, it did not waver or disappear. It was as fixed to the spot and as solid and real as every-	[ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]
thing else here, perhaps moreso in some strange way. It was a window. "You don't understand because you were never here before," Kite breathed. "This... changes everything. It puts everything into a new perspective, do you see?" It could have been a genuine euphoria, some part of the explorer in him suddenly exhilarated by this new feature, but Kite sensed it was more to do with delirium. Either way he felt dizzy. Tsukasa had all but fallen mute. The window --an open window, at that-- did not impart with her the same joy of discovery it had in her companion. Yet there was still a part of her, that small nagging literary part, that understood what Kite meant, even if he himself didn't. Doors and hallways offered passage, but windows offered vision. Sight.