Sapporo. Noboribetsu. Only then Hakodate.
Satoru found himself resenting Makoto for making a promise that lay so far away. He had lost count of how many times "Afterglow" had repeated through the car's speakers. All he knew was that the sky had begun to brighten. Dawn gathered around the rising sun, beautiful in a way he could not bear to look at.
It was 4:50 in the morning, and his head felt as though someone had driven a red-hot bar through it. He forced his pale blue-gold eyes to remain open. From Noboribetsu, Hakodate was still hours away.
Yuuki sat with her head bowed and her eyes half-open. Each breath came long and slow, as though the next might be the one after which her eyes finally closed.
Tolls, fuel, and rest-stop purchases had battered Satoru's credit card all night. He would gladly have paid twice as much for a stronger engine, but the Santana 2000 was already giving him everything it had.
So was he.
The darkness beyond the windows had finally given way to Hokkaido's open countryside, but Satoru had no attention to spare for the view.
Bloodshot lines stood out around his pale blue-gold eyes. The Fluctlight kept him awake while exhaustion tore through the rest of him in sharp, needling bursts. He leaned forward instead of resting against the seat. If he let himself get comfortable, his body might remember how badly it wanted to sleep.
A distance marker flashed past.
Satoru read the number and felt his brow tighten.
Yuuki would not make it to the place Makoto had promised her.
He hated the conclusion, but the distance and the time left no room to deny it. He could defy the system inside a virtual world. The laws of the real one would not bend for him.
Satoru closed his eyes for one heartbeat, forced them open again, and looked at the motionless girl beside him.
A rough breath escaped his throat.
Then he made his choice.
He wrenched the steering wheel around. The Santana left the highway at the next exit and abandoned the road to Hakodate.
If he could not take Yuuki to that sea, he would take her to another.
It meant finishing Makoto's promise with a lie, but it was the only ending Satoru had left to give her.
He turned toward Muroran, a quiet port city facing the Pacific. Nearby stood Cape Chikyu, where a cliffside observation deck overlooked the ocean and a white lighthouse faced the wind. Satoru remembered seeing it once on television, the pale sky and deep-blue water meeting beyond dark reefs and white surf.
It would have to do.
After one last sprint, the Santana finally slowed and pulled onto the roadside. Satoru released the steering wheel with shaking hands. He had gripped it so hard that its textured pattern was pressed deep into his palms.
He unfastened his seat belt and climbed out, only for his legs to fold beneath him.
Satoru caught himself, shook his head hard, and shut down the Fluctlight. The pale blue-gold vanished from his eyes.
Cold fog closed around him at once.
The coastal weather had changed without warning. Instead of a clear dawn, the sky was buried beneath a dirty gray mist. Satoru hurried to the passenger side and opened the door. Yuuki's skin was cold, and fine sweat covered her face.
He released her seat belt and lifted her into his arms.
She weighed almost nothing.
The instant the cold air touched her, her body curled in on itself.
Satoru set her back down long enough to remove his jacket. He wrapped it tightly around her, shielding her from the wind, then gathered her up again.
"Just a few more steps," he said. "Hold on a little longer."
He carried her up the narrow hill path. His heart hammered wildly, and his body felt more unsteady with every step. He had done nothing but drive through the night, yet maintaining his Fluctlight for so long had pushed him to the edge. If he relaxed for even a moment, he would collapse.
But after coming this far, he had no choice but to keep pushing.
For better or worse, that was one of the few things he had always been good at.
By the time Satoru reached the highest observation deck, every breath came as a gasp.
On a clear day, Cape Chikyu was famous for the way the Pacific horizon curved before the cliff. Blue sky met blue water beyond the white lighthouse, while waves broke against the rocks far below. The only sound was the wind rushing in from the ocean.
That was how it was supposed to look.
Fog swallowed everything beyond the railing. Satoru could see neither sky nor sea, only broken layers of gray. The ocean existed somewhere below, revealed only by the crash of waves he could not see.
An imperfect journey, ending in the same hurried, unfinished way.
The wind struck his thin shirt and pressed it against his narrow frame. Shino had once thought that despite his build, he looked as sturdy as young bamboo. Now he was no more than a weed fighting not to bend.
Satoru looked down at the girl bundled in his jacket. Only her head remained visible, turned toward the cold gray emptiness.
"Is this it?"
Her voice nearly vanished in the wind.
"Yes. We're here."
Satoru kept his voice low.
"We were unlucky. The fog is hiding most of it."
The apology was a lie, but Yuuki showed no disappointment. Instead, relief softened her expression.
"It's all right. I've seen beautiful oceans plenty of times in virtual worlds. This is the first time I've seen one like this in reality."
A faint smile touched her lips.
"The real world really is different."
Satoru adjusted his hold so she could see more clearly, even though there was nothing beautiful to show her.
Life slowly returned to Yuuki's eyes, but gold still drifted loose within them.
"The truth is, I never liked the ocean that much."
Satoru said nothing.
He simply listened.
"It was something to hold on to. I could never go far from my hospital bed, so I imagined how wonderful the world outside must be and used that hope to keep myself moving."
Yuuki watched the fog.
"Maybe my sea only had meaning because it was always somewhere beyond my reach."
Her voice weakened, but she continued.
"I saw the sea Makoto talked about in a dream that night. I think all I really wanted was for both of us to leave that place and return to the world. The sea was only the shape we gave that promise, wasn't it?"
Satoru had no answer.
He knew Yuuki and Makoto, but he had never truly been part of either life. Fate had made him the only remaining link between them, and the cruelest possible one. He could fulfill only part of Makoto's promise, and Yuuki had no one else through whom she could remember him.
Satoru and Shinkawa had tried to stand in for the hero she had lost.
But could anyone really do that?
Neither of them had truly known Yuuki or Makoto.
They had been a boy and a girl with terminal illnesses, taken away from their parents, their friends, and the lives they should have had. Day after day, they endured inside an institution that smelled of disinfectant.
Their only good fortune had been finding someone beside them who understood. They supported each other, and every small improvement became the best medicine either of them could receive.
Perhaps seeing the other smile each day had been reason enough to keep living.
If you could do it, then so could I.
I only had to catch up.
That was the gentle bond between them.
A princess could have only one hero.
And the person who had come in his place was the man who killed him.
Yuuki's eyes were closing. Satoru could do nothing to stop them. If shouting her name could have helped, she would never have reached this point.
Words failed him. He lowered himself to one knee and turned his body so the wind could no longer strike her exposed face.
His gaze fixed on the last gold remaining in her eyes.
Counting Kayaba's artificial Fluctlight, she would be the third Fluctlight bearer to die before him.
He remembered what Yuuki had said in the car about being afraid of death.
Satoru had thought about it too. Closing his eyes and never waking again. The decay of the body meant little compared with losing the ability to think, to feel joy, or even to feel sorrow. Whenever that eternal absence found him late at night, he was afraid.
Everything ended.
Time was limited.
The hard part was fulfilling what mattered within the time they were given, then leaving without regret.
Makoto's promise to Yuuki.
Satoru's promise to Sheeta.
The Fluctlight was no exception. Was that empty domain truly bottomless? The faster he moved, the sooner he would reach its end. Eventually, his eyes would take him there too.
The end of the Fluctlight.
"The Fluctlight's... end," Satoru murmured.
At the boundary between black and white, a single slash had once struck straight through his mind. Precise as a scalpel, it had shown him the end waiting beyond the Fluctlight.
Satoru knew he could never reproduce such a wound. It had been closer to a miracle than an attack. Even now, the memory of that indigo gaze sent cold through his soul.
But the terror he had felt then was gone.
He still remembered the slash, the eyes behind it, and the will it had carried.
Kayaba had explained that the Fluctlight accelerated human thought. In a virtual world, the brain's heightened electrical activity intensified the signals sent through the system. When those signals reached another person, a sensitive brain could be injured by the violent emotion carried with them.
That was how Kayaba had explained the pain of battle between Fluctlight bearers.
But what about the person with the indigo eyes?
Where had he come from?
Why had he remained in that place?
Satoru clutched his head as another wave of pain passed through it.
Was the Fluctlight truly nothing more than what Kayaba had described?
If one bearer could harm another inside a virtual world, what about reality? Without a machine or an electronic signal between them, could he still prove Kayaba's explanation incomplete?
Satoru pulled Yuuki upright and forced her eyelids open. Pale gold flooded over the black of his eyes. Reactivating the Fluctlight so soon sent a tearing pain through his nerves, but he did not look away.
His gaze drove into Yuuki's empty eyes like a blade.
...
At Narita Airport in Tokyo, Kikuoka stood at the arrivals exit with his hands in his pockets. He carried no welcome sign and showed none of the impatience of the people waiting around him.
He simply watched the crowd.
A young man emerged with a girl on his back.
He carried no luggage. His face was white as paper, and every step seemed to cost him. The girl rested against his narrow shoulders with her eyes closed, as though deeply asleep. Even in his condition, he moved carefully enough not to disturb her.
Kikuoka stepped forward.
"You booked a flight from New Chitose Airport to Tokyo two hours ago, and your credit card has had a very expensive night."
His eyes moved over Satoru.
"Judging by your condition, so have you."
"It was harder than any battle I've fought."
Kikuoka glanced at Yuuki.
"Let me take her back to Nagashima. That's the best outcome now."
"What happened to Nagashima and Shouichi?"
"They're both fine. Nagashima will be leaving Japan soon. Apparently, he has a friend overseas who can help him."
"Just like Rinko-san, then."
Satoru studied him.
"How many people will you assign to watch them?"
Kikuoka shook his head.
"Nagashima and Rinko Koujiro are both intelligent people. I don't need heavy-handed methods to keep them from causing trouble. Leaving Japan was their choice, and I don't have as much authority as you seem to think."
"Then let Yuuki leave with Nagashima."
Confusion crossed Kikuoka's face.
Satoru gave a tired laugh.
"Did you think she was dead?"
Kikuoka's composure broke. He looked sharply at the fragile girl on Satoru's back.
"The Fluctlight is gone," Satoru said. "So are the illness and the confusion."
He fell silent for a moment.
"It's over."
"I'll place her in Nagashima-san's care myself. You don't need to trouble yourself."
Satoru walked past him.
"Satoru-kun."
Kikuoka caught up and held out a slip of paper with a number written on it.
"My phone number. I think you'll keep it. Sooner or later, you'll need it."
Satoru looked at him.
"You're right," he said. "Before, it was Makoto, Yuuki, Shouichi, and you. Now it's you and me."
"I believe you'll accept Rath eventually," Kikuoka said quietly.
"We'll see when the time comes."
Satoru said nothing else. With Yuuki still on his back, he walked toward the airport exit.