When Shino smiled again, Kyouji looked away for a moment, as if meeting her eyes embarrassed him. Then he turned back at once, worry on his face.
"About what happened today... shouldn't you tell the school?"
"It would not help. If they try it again, I will go straight to the police."
Shino gave a small shrug. Then she looked at him.
"What about you, Shinkawa-kun? Are you all right?"
"Me?"
Kyouji blinked.
After summer vacation, he had stopped going to school.
Shino only knew the rumors. Apparently, in the soccer club he belonged to, he had been mistreated by upperclassmen. He was smaller than most boys, and his family ran a large hospital, which made him an easy target. It was not as clumsy as what Endou and the others had done to Shino, but there had been the usual little forms of squeezing money out of him, making him pay for food or outings.
"I am fine. I have already talked it over with my family. I will study at home for now."
"I see."
Shino did not push further.
The first time Kyouji talked to her about that world was in June, at the branch library near the ward office.
Shino had been reading a magazine called The World of Firearms.
Not because she liked it.
The opposite.
She had forced herself to open it because she had to.
Even printed photographs of guns could make her fingers go cold. She was trying to get used to them little by little, page by page, in the quietest corner of the library.
Then, on one page, she saw it.
That black handgun.
Her throat locked. She shut the magazine before she could think.
"Asada-san?"
Kyouji, who had been sitting across from her, noticed.
"Do you like guns?"
"No. The opposite."
The answer came out before she could stop it.
She could not explain any more than that. Kyouji looked down at the magazine, then at her face. After a brief hesitation, he began talking in a nervous rush.
He knew a lot about guns.
Models, calibers, mechanisms, games that used them. At first, Shino barely listened. But one phrase caught in her ear.
Another world.
She had heard about FullDive game machines. She had also heard the name VRMMO. But for Shino, who had never played games as a child, a world of swords and magic belonged in fantasy novels and nowhere else. She had no interest in it.
Kyouji's world was different.
No swords. No magic.
Only guns.
Its name was Gun Gale Online.
"Does that world have... that gun too?"
She asked carefully, her hands clenched tight with cold sweat.
Kyouji thought for a moment, then nodded.
"I think so. There are a lot of real-world firearms in GGO."
That was when Shino first wondered if she might be able to face it there.
Not in this world.
In a world beyond the screen, beyond her real body.
The black handgun that had carved its bullet mark into the eleven-year-old girl named Shino Asada.
Six months had passed since then.
The GGO player named Sinon had become known as a cold sniper.
But she still had not faced an enemy who used that gun.
So she still did not know whether the real Shino had grown stronger.
"Do you have time?"
Kyouji asked as they left school.
"If it is just for a bit."
They went to a quiet cafe near the station and sat across from each other.
"You were amazing recently, Asada-san. I watched the footage. You really stood up to Samuro."
"It was not that impressive. The operation failed. Out of six people, five of us died. I was the only one who made it back."
"But you survived. Against Samuro, with a Peacekeeper. That is already more than enough."
Kyouji spoke with real excitement.
"Samuro is an old launch player. In some circles, he is famous. He has almost no record of losing in field combat, and he takes on dangerous ruins alone. He does not show up much in Bullet of Bullets, so most people do not know him, but players who do open-field PK or bounty work know the name."
"He does not enter tournaments?"
"Hardly ever. He does high-level material runs, escorts, bounty hunting, that sort of thing. A free-spirited gunman, basically. But that is why he irritates me a little."
"Irritates you?"
"If someone is that strong, he should share his techniques. Or at least give other strong players more chances to learn from him. Instead, he just wanders around doing whatever he wants."
Kyouji's voice sharpened. Not hatred, exactly. Envy was closer.
"And he has the Peacekeeper. A rare weapon like that changes everything."
"Maybe."
Shino stirred the melting ice in her glass with her straw.
"But rare guns are strong because strong players can use them. It does not mean every player with a rare gun is strong. Half of the top thirty use customized shop weapons."
"That is easy for you to say. You have Hecate II, and your build is not crippled."
The words came out too quickly.
Shino looked at him. Kyouji seemed to realize how he had sounded and dropped his gaze.
"Sorry."
"It is fine."
She did not want this conversation to turn strange.
"Are you entering the next BoB, Shinkawa-kun?"
"No. There is no point."
"Why not? You reached the semifinals in the preliminaries last time. If you had pushed just a bit more, you could have made the finals."
"An AGI build has limits. Unless you are absurdly lucky, you cannot go far at the top level. Maybe I made the wrong build from the start."
Kyouji's avatar, Spiegel, was an AGI-type build that had been popular in GGO's early days.
AGI improved movement, evasion, and the speed of the assist circle. In the early meta, it had been a powerful choice. But as maps expanded and live-ammo weapons grew stronger, STR became harder to ignore. A player who wanted better accuracy had to sacrifice evasion, and after eight months of the game's release, pure AGI had fallen out of fashion.
Even so, with fast shooting and the right weapon, an AGI player could still compete. Yamikaze had placed second as a pure AGI build.
But the player who defeated him, XeXeeD, had used a balanced STR-VIT build. That was also true.
"Samuro is even more extreme than you, though."
"That is because he has the Peacekeeper. And techniques I do not have."
"I do not think that is all."
Shino remembered the calm way Samuro moved. The way he smiled, even with enemies around him. The way nothing seemed to hurry him.
His strength was not only stats or a rare weapon.
It was something in the player.
If a person like that chose a pure STR build, he would probably find another way to dominate the field.
"You are always hard on yourself," Shino said.
"And you are too relaxed about yourself, Asada-san."
He looked up with a faint smile, but it did not last.
"You have already passed me. You have that rifle. You have the composure. I am just... stuck."
"I am not as composed as you think."
The words came out softer than she intended.
She almost said it then.
She almost said: I want to kill them all.
Instead, she looked down at her glass.
"I just want to place higher next time."
In the second Bullet of Bullets, her first tournament, Sinon had reached the final battle and placed twenty-second.
Because the final map had forced several close-range encounters, she had carried an assault rifle instead of Hecate II. In the end, she was defeated by a sniper who used a rifle but could still fight at mid-range.
Two months later, she had finally begun to tame Hecate II.
She had also obtained an MP7 for close quarters.
Next time, she would bring the enormous rifle, hide in cover, and blow away every careless target that entered her range.
If she defeated every strong gunman in GGO, then she would know.
She would know that Sinon was the strongest.
And if Sinon was the strongest, then maybe Shino could be strong too.
"Shinkawa-kun, you have been online too much lately," she said, changing the subject. "I was worried. Every time I log in, you seem to be there."
"I am studying too."
"For the medical school exam?"
"For the university entrance qualification exam first. If I pass that, then I can take the entrance exam for my father's medical university."
Kyouji's father ran a large hospital. He was strict with his second son. After a family discussion, Kyouji had been allowed to study from home, but only if he passed the qualification exam within two years and entered the private medical school his father wanted.
"Can you make it?"
"My mock rankings are still high enough. No problem, Instructor-sama."
His joking tone made Shino blink. Then she gave a small laugh.
"Then study properly."
"I will. What about tomorrow? Are you logging in?"
"Probably. I may be going into a dungeon with someone."
"A dungeon... with Samuro?"
"Maybe."
"I see. Then... another time. We can practice for BoB when you are free."
"Sure."
Kyouji smiled, but the loneliness in it did not quite disappear.
After they parted, Shino returned alone to her apartment.
She checked the mail, bought a few groceries at the supermarket, and climbed the stairs to her room. The place was small, but it was hers. She turned on the light, put the food away, and changed out of her uniform.
Then, without knowing why, she opened the drawer of her desk.
Inside were neatly sorted boxes of stationery.
At the very back, it appeared.
A small thing shining with a heavy black gleam.
A toy.
Shino froze.
It was a model gun. Not a model of any real handgun. The grip had an ergonomic curve, and above the oversized trigger jutted a large-caliber muzzle. The mechanism, violent-looking and pierced with heat vents, sat high and far behind the grip. It was probably what people called a bullpup structure.
Sinon had obtained one inside a storage room in Glocken as well.
But of course, the object Shino held in the real world was not something she had bought. It was not even sold in stores.
A few days after the second Bullet of Bullets, after Sinon had placed twenty-second in the final battle, an English email from GGO's operator, Zaskar, arrived in her account.
It said a novelty item would be sent to players who had ranked highly in the tournament.
A few days later, the package arrived.
For Shino, who would one day need to test whether GGO's medicine really worked by touching a model gun in the real world, buying one at a toy store had been too much. Having one sent to her had almost felt convenient.
That was all it was supposed to be.
Just a step.
Her throat closed.
The room tilted.
No.
Her fingers had already gone numb.
Shino dropped the model gun as if it had burned her. It struck the floor with a dry clack.
Her stomach clenched.
She staggered to the bathroom.
The moment she lifted the toilet lid and crouched in front of it, heat surged up from the pit of her stomach. Her body twisted and spasmed. Again and again, she vomited, as if she were trying to empty out everything inside her.
By the time it stopped, her eyes were full of tears and her throat burned.
She rinsed her mouth. Washed her face. Stared at the sink without seeing it.
Then she went back to the room.
The model gun still lay on the floor.
It was small.
It was fake.
It could not kill anyone.
Shino wrapped it in a towel and shoved it back into the drawer.
Then she collapsed onto the floor.
"Save me..."
The voice that came out of her mouth was thin.
"Someone... save me..."
The memory did not start at the beginning.
It never did.
It came in pieces.
Dark blue uniforms. Adult voices telling her to hand over the gun.
But her fingers would not open.
Red lines drawn around a body.
Yellow tape fluttering in the wind.
White flashes beyond that tape, bright enough to make her dizzy.
Only after she was put into a patrol car did she realize her shoulder hurt. Someone noticed and sent her to an ambulance.
At the hospital, female officers asked her questions.
What happened?
What did the man say?
Where had she stood?
How many times had she pulled the trigger?
Shino wanted her mother.
But her mother stayed in the hospital for more than a month, while Shino was discharged after three days.
For the first time, she stayed with her grandparents.
The news was restrained. Because the robber had died, the case went to prosecutors without a public trial. Officially, it disappeared quietly.
But small towns did not need the news.
Rumors were enough.
For the remaining year and a half of elementary school, she was called a murderer. In middle school, people simply avoided her.
That was not the worst part.
The worst part was what remained inside her.
Anything shaped like a gun could trigger it.
A toy. A picture. A drama on television. Even a short clip in an educational video.
Her breathing would fail. Her body would freeze. Sometimes she would vomit. Sometimes she would faint.
So she stopped watching movies and dramas.
She spent her middle school days in the library, where old novels were safer than images.
For four years, she went through psychotherapy and medication.
The doctors told her they understood.
It must have been hard.
It must have hurt.
Their voices were gentle. Their smiles were careful.
And every time, something in Shino asked the same question.
Then have you ever shot someone?
She knew it was unfair.
Maybe that question was why she had never really trusted them.
But it was still true.
What Shino wanted most was simple.
She wanted someone to tell her clearly whether what she had done was good or evil.
No doctor could do that.
She did not regret shooting him.
If she went back to that moment, she would pull the trigger again.
If she ended herself now, it would be the same as admitting that man had killed her after all.
That, at least, was how she understood it.
She wanted the strength to say what she had done was right.
Like a soldier on a battlefield, shooting the enemy in front of her.
That was why she had chosen to live alone.
After middle school, she left her grandparents' house and moved to Tokyo, the city where she had lived as a baby with her parents.
Her grandparents and her mother saw her off.
Her mother still treated her as the child she had been before the incident, hugging her and stroking her hair as if time had stopped.
Shino did not hate her for it.
She simply could not stay there.
The city air was dirty. The water tasted bad. Everything cost too much.
And yet, there she met Kyouji.
And through him, GGO.
The first time she logged in, terrified and confused, she was dragged onto a battlefield before she understood anything.
Then she discovered something unexpected.
Maybe it was because she had left real-world Japan behind.
Maybe it was because that place felt like another world.
In GGO, handling guns did not break her.
Even when she used them to take down other players, she only felt tension. Not the attack. Not that freezing collapse.
When she obtained Hecate II, the enormous anti-materiel rifle became her favorite possession.
Sometimes she stroked its barrel. Sometimes she pressed her cheek to the rounded scope like a girl hugging a stuffed animal.
It was not normal.
She knew that.
But it was hers.
If she could keep fighting with that child in the virtual wilderness, maybe the wound would close.
Maybe the fear would finally be driven out.
But was this really okay?
The doubt would not leave.
Shino pushed herself up and went to the mirror.
The girl looking back at her was thin, with large eyes, a small nose, and pale lips. More like a half-starved kitten than a wildcat.
Nothing like Sinon.
The warrior of the wasteland.
The sniper with a heart of ice.
The person Shino wanted to become.
But here, in the real world, Shino could not even hold a fake gun.
"Really... is this really okay...?"
Her glasses reflected the light.
They had no prescription.
They were not for her eyesight.
They were armor.
The lenses were made from tough NXT polymer. According to the advertisement, they would not shatter even if hit by a bullet. Shino did not know whether that was true. But she had spent almost too much of her living expenses on them, and they gave her a small sense of safety.
Now she could not leave home without them.
External armor.
Borrowed strength.
Was that all she had?
"Who is going to tell me what I should do...?"
The question slipped out weakly.
No answer came.
Of course it did not.
No one was coming to save her.
Shino wiped her face with both hands.
Not yet.
It was still not enough.
There were still twenty-one gunmen stronger than Sinon in that world. If she sent every one of them to hell, if she stood alone at the top of the wasteland...
Then Shino and Sinon would become one.
Then she would gain real strength here too.
That man, and that gun, would be buried among all the enemies she had defeated.
She would never have to remember them again.
Shino turned the air conditioner up, stripped off her uniform, and sat on the bed.
She placed her glasses on the desk.
Without them, the room blurred at the edges.
She lay down, pulled the AmuSphere over her head, and connected the cable by touch.
Her voice was barely more than a whisper.
"Link Start."
It sounded like a child after crying herself dry, fading alone into the quiet of the room.