1

“Welcome. Party of one?”

The waiter bowed graciously. I told him I was waiting for someone, and then looked around the spacious café. A loud, carefree voice broke the calm, from a table near a window in the back.

“Hey, Kirito, over here!”

The hushed, refined chatter that had flowed atop the classical background music fell silent, replaced by disapproving stares. I hunched my shoulders and rushed over to the source of the shout. With my faded leather flight jacket and distressed jeans, I was firmly out of place next to the middle-aged, manicured women of wealth on their shopping trips, who filled the room. Their irritation at the party responsible for summoning me here was growing by the moment.

If my partner had been a lovely young lady, that would be one thing, but it was a man in a suit who waved me over. I plopped into the seat across from him, not bothering to hide my dissatisfaction.

The waiter instantly swooped in and offered me a glass of water and a fresh hand towel, along with a menu. I grabbed it, noting the leather finish, and the fellow across the table piped up.

“This is on me, so order whatever you like.”

“I figured as much,” I replied as I looked over the menu, only to discover the cheapest item on it was the chou à la crème at 1,200 yen. I quickly made to order a simple cup of coffee, but it occurred to me that this man was a highly paid official and would just expense the meal, putting it on the taxpayers’ tab. Feeling like an idiot, I ordered a string of items, trying to act natural.

“Erm…I’ll have the parfait au chocolat…the mille-feuille framboise…and a hazelnut coffee,” I said, somehow managing to avoid tripping over my tongue. The total came out to 3,900 yen. I almost felt like finishing with a hamburger and a shake and demanding the change. Incidentally, those items were chosen randomly off the menu, and I had no idea what I was actually getting.

“They’ll be right up.”

The waiter departed smoothly and I looked up with a sigh.

The man across the table chowing down on a giant serving of pudding piled high with cream was Seijirou Kikuoka. He featured thick black-rimmed glasses, an utterly plain haircut, and narrow, fussy features that brought a Japanese language teacher to mind—but despite all of this, he was actually an ambitious fast riser within the government. He worked for the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ Telecommunications Bureau, Advanced Network Division, Second Office: known within the ministry as the Virtual Network Management Division, aka “Virtual Division.”

In other words, this man was a government agent—or scapegoat—in charge of monitoring the chaotic and lawless VR world. He often lamented that he’d been sequestered in this position, and I believed that was probably the case.

Misfortunate Mr. Kikuoka carried the last blissful bite of pudding to his mouth and looked up with a mischievous grin.

“Hi there, Kirito. Sorry for forcing you to make the trip out here.”

“If you were really sorry, you wouldn’t ask me to come to Ginza.”

I wiped my hands with the faintly citrus-smelling hand towel, then added, “Plus, I don’t know why you think you should call me Kirito.”

“Oh, don’t be mean. Wasn’t I the first person who rushed to your bedside when you woke up in the hospital a year ago?”

Sadly, that was true. The very first person to visit me after my awakening from that game of death was Kikuoka, who’d been a government agent working for the task force on that case.

At the time, I used polite speech with him, but as time went on and I realized that he was not contacting me solely out of altruistic concern, I gradually got more snarky and sarcastic. Or perhaps he was manipulating me into that attitude—but I was probably overthinking it.

I glanced at Kikuoka, who seemed to be seriously considering another order for himself, and warned myself not to let him manipulate me.

“I heard they found some huge rare-earth deposit in Sagami Bay, and all the senior officials from the appropriate ministries were dancing a jig to ‘Turkey in the Straw.’ Yet here you are, wondering if you should pony up for another cream puff,” I jabbed.

Kikuoka looked up, blinked several times, then beamed.

“Doesn’t matter, because none of the profit they make excavating that will go to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. I think I’ll hold off, for the benefit of the national budget.”

He snapped the menu shut and I gave him another sigh.

“Can we get to the business at hand, then? I can already guess what it is: another virtual crime needing hands-on research?”

“I love how quick you are on the uptake, Kirito,” Kikuoka replied without missing a step. He pulled out a super-thin tablet computer from the briefcase on the seat next to him.

That’s right—he’s using me, a survivor of the Sword Art Online Incident, the worst online crime in Japan’s history, as a provider of information.

According to what I’d read, the regular police called their informants “cooperators” or “monitors,” and the act of periodically handing out rewards in exchange for information was called “managing contacts.” If that was the case, you could say that that Kikuoka was “managing” me with the occasional piece of cake.

That wasn’t exactly a good feeling, but I owed him for breaking the rules and telling me which hospital Asuna was being kept in. If I hadn’t had that info, I wouldn’t have been able to find Asuna Yuuki so quickly again in the real world. That meant I wouldn’t have learned about Nobuyuki Sugou’s diabolical scheme, nor would I have been able to prevent him from taking Asuna as his own.

So for the time being, I was content to be Kikuoka’s monitor. I just wasn’t going to bother kissing his ass, or holding back from ordering the most expensive cake on the menu.

Meanwhile, my benevolent manager, totally unaware of what was running through my head, traced a finger along the tablet and slowly muttered, “See, the thing is, the number of virtual-space crimes are on the rise again…”

“Oh? Break it down for me.”

“Well…we’ve got over a hundred claims of virtual asset theft or damage just for November alone. On top of that, thirteen cases of real-life assault stemming from trouble within VR games. One of which led to death…You’ve probably already heard about that one, since it was all over the media—the one with the replica Western-style sword that was honed to an edge, then swung around at Shinjuku Station, killing two. Four feet long and eight pounds, yikes! I don’t know how you swing something like that around.”

“Apparently he was hallucinating because of the drugs he took to keep him going through all those play sessions. It sounds horrifying when you look at that one case, but while I don’t want to minimize it, if that’s all there is, compared to the big picture…”

“Yes, exactly. It’s just a tiny fraction of the total number of assault cases nationwide, and it would be silly to suggest a short-sighted conclusion, like VRMMOs are brewing social unrest. But I remember what you said earlier…”

“That VRMMO games lower the mental barriers to causing others physical harm in the real world. Yes, I’ll admit that,” I said. The waiter appeared without a sound and placed two plates and a cup in front of me.

“Will that be all for today?”

I nodded, and he placed the receipt on the corner of the table facedown, so as not to display the shocking total price. I took a sip of the nutty, fragrant coffee and continued.

“PKing is becoming more and more customary in certain games, and you could see that as a training exercise for real murder. The ones who are really pushing the boundaries even have realistic blood spray for severed veins, and guts that spill out of your stomach. The people who get really obsessed with those even commit suicide as a means of logging out.”

I heard a cough, and looked over my shoulder to see two high-class ladies glaring at me, aghast. I ducked my head and lowered my voice.

“It’s not hard to imagine someone who does that every day in their spare time deciding to try it out in real life. I agree that some kind of measures need to be taken. But outlawing it won’t work.”

“No go?”

“No go.”

I carefully scooped up some of the many-layered cake of fine sponge and pink cream with the golden spoon, and lifted it to my mouth. It occurred to me that a single spoonful of this dessert probably cost a hundred yen. The cake practically melted on my tongue.

“You’d have to completely isolate them on the Net. In terms of the actual bandwidth consumed, VRMMOs are actually fairly lightweight. If you try to crack down domestically, the users and developers will just go overseas.”

“Hmm…”

Kikuoka looked down at the table, silent for several seconds.

“…That mille-feuille looks really good. Can I have a bite?”

“…”

I sighed for the third time and pushed the plate over to him. The dignified government employee gleefully tore off about 280 yen of cake and shoved it into his mouth.

“Well, here’s what I wonder, Kirito…Why do they want to kill each other, rather than get along? Seems like that would be more fun.”

“…You’ve played a bit of ALfheim Online, so you should understand. Even in the days before full-dive technology came along, MMORPGs have always been about competition. When you have an online game with no set end point, what keeps the players motivated? When you get down to it…they want that instinctual feeling of superiority, of being the best.”

“Oh?”

He raised an eyebrow as he chewed, seeking elaboration. I wondered why I had to explain all of this, then vindictively decided to give him what he wanted.

“It’s not just about video games. Isn’t the desire to be praised and be better than others the cornerstone of our society? You must know that from personal experience. You see other bureaucrats in the ministry who came from better schools, and you’re jealous of their more rapid career success. Meanwhile, it feels good to mingle with those not on the career fast track, and see how much better you have it. You can only stuff yourself with that cake because you’ve found an equilibrium between superiority and inferiority.”

Kikuoka swallowed the mille-feuille and smiled awkwardly.

“Wow, you don’t hold back, do you? What about you, Kirito? Have you gotten that equilibrium?”

“…”

I had a mountain of an inferiority complex, but I wasn’t going to admit that to him. Instead, I kept a straight face.

“…Well, I do have a girlfriend.”

“And in that one sense, I am exceedingly jealous of you, Kirito. Mind introducing me to a girl in ALO sometime? I wouldn’t mind getting to know that sylph leader.”

“Just to warn you, if you try to hit on her by saying you’re a high-ranking bureaucrat, she’ll cut you in two.”

“At her hands, I wouldn’t mind. So?”

“So, it’s extremely difficult to gain that kind of superiority in the real world. It’s the kind of thing that doesn’t come without a ton of work. Work to get good grades, work to get better at sports, work to be handsome, or pretty…They all take an incredible amount of time and energy, and they don’t guarantee you any success.”

“I see. Like how I nearly studied myself to death for college entrance exams, and I didn’t get into Tokyo University,” he said, grinning for some reason. I decided not to crack on him, and got straight to the point instead.

“But in a massive multiplayer online role-playing game, if you spend your time there at the expense of real life, you’re guaranteed to get stronger. You’ll get rare loot. Sure, it takes effort, but it’s all a game. It’s way more fun than studying or lifting weights. When you walk down the main street of town in your expensive gear and that high-level indicator next to your name, you can feel the jealous stares of the characters weaker than you…or at least, you feel like you do. If you go out to hunt monsters, you can destroy them in one hit with your overwhelming power and save parties in need. Then they thank you and look up to you—”

“Or at least, it feels that way?”

“…It’s a one-dimensional view, I admit. There are other facets to MMOs. There have been online games for the purpose of communication above all else for years and years, but they’ve never been a hit the way MMORPGs have.”

“I see what you’re saying. Because you don’t feel the satisfaction of superiority in those games?”

“Exactly. Then VRMMOs came along. Now you can actually feel those stares as you walk down the street. You don’t have to imagine them coming through the monitor.”

“Uh-huh. I’ve seen the jealous looks that you and Asuna get when you stroll through Ygg City.”

“…Wow, you don’t hold back, do you? At any rate, anyone playing a VRMMO can enjoy that superiority if they sink the time into it. And it’s a kind of superiority that’s simpler, more primitive, and more instinctual than what you get for good grades, or being good at soccer.”

“Meaning…?”

“Meaning strength. Physical, muscular strength. The power to destroy your opponent with your own hands. It’s like a drug.”

“…Strength…The greatest power of all,” Kikuoka murmured nostalgically. “Every boy dreams of having that kind of strength someday…You read a fighting manga, then imagine going through the same training. But once you realize it doesn’t come that easy, you switch dreams to something that’s a little more realistic…You’re saying that in the VRMMO world, you can experience that dream again?”

I nodded and, after my lengthy speech, quenched my dry throat with a sip of coffee.

“That’s right. One of the heavy martial arts simulation games is so focused on reality, they formed partnerships with actual martial arts schools.”

“Oh? Meaning?”

“Meaning that if you raise your in-game character to a certain level, you can actually be a registered expert in Whatchamacallit Karate, or So-and-So Kung Fu. They set the game in a realistically modeled Shinjuku and Shibuya, and you get to dole out justice to a bunch of unruly thugs. The problem is, it doesn’t teach you the proper mind-set of a martial artist. So anyone who gets completely sucked into that kind of game only goes through the motions, if you will…and sadly, I can’t deny the possibility that some of them will be curious to try out the moves they learned in the real world.”

“I see…So you’re worried about the presence of strength in a VRMMO bleeding over into reality. Say, Kirito,” Kikuoka said, looking directly into my eyes, “do you really think that’s just a mental thing?”

“…What do you mean?”

“Do you think it’s not just lowering the mental hurdles to violence and teaching the player the knowledge and skill to fight…but that it could also be having some kind of physical effect on the bodies of the players?”

Now it was my turn to stop and think it over.

“Are you asking if that guy swinging an eight-pound sword in Shinjuku might have earned his arm strength through a game somehow?”

“Yes, exactly.”

“Hmm…Well, I hear that they’ve only just begun studying the long-term effect of the full-dive system on human nerves. I mean, your actual body’s just lying down, so your core strength would obviously fall, but maybe there’s some effect on our ability to tap that subconscious panic strength…Wouldn’t you know that better than me, though?”

“I did an interview with what they call a cerebro-physiologist, but I didn’t understand a word of it. Now, I know it was a very roundabout way to get to the point, but this is what I wanted to talk to you about. Look at this.”

Kikuoka tapped at the tablet and showed it to me. I examined the screen and saw a head shot of an unfamiliar man along with a profile containing an address and other details. He had long, unkempt hair, silver-rimmed glasses, and heavy fat around his cheeks and neck.

“…Who’s this?”

Kikuoka took the tablet back and traced it with his fingers.

“Let’s see, it was last month…November fourteenth. At an apartment building in the Nakano Ward of Tokyo, the landlord was cleaning and noticed a funny smell. He narrowed it down to one unit, but there was no response to the intercom or the phone. Yet the lights were on in the apartment. So he undid the electronic lock and entered the apartment to find…Tamotsu Shigemura, age twenty-six, dead. They determined he was dead for five and a half days. The room was cluttered, but not ransacked, and the body was lying on the bed. Around his head was…”

“An AmuSphere,” I finished, envisioning the full-dive headgear unit made of two metal rings, one of which was in my own room. Kikuoka nodded.

“That’s right. They contacted the family at once, and had an autopsy performed. The cause of death was sudden cardiac arrest.”

“Cardiac arrest? Meaning that his heart just stopped working? Why did it stop?”

“We don’t know.”

“…”

“Too much time passed after his death, and the likelihood of criminal involvement was low, so they didn’t bother with a detailed autopsy. The one thing we know is that he hadn’t eaten anything in about two days, and was still logged in.”

I furrowed my brow again. It wasn’t all that rare to hear stories like this. Eating “food” in the virtual world caused a false sense of fulfillment that lasted several hours, even if the user hadn’t eaten anything in the real world. The ultra-hardcore gamers found that this cut down on food costs and gave them more time to play, so it wasn’t rare to hear about players who only ate one meal every two days.

Naturally, if that pattern continued, there would be ill effects on the body. Malnutrition was an obvious outcome, and if you had a seizure while living alone, unable to care for yourself…the natural outcome was much like this case. It happened from time to time.

I closed my eyes for a moment and said a silent prayer for Shigemura, then opened my mouth.

“It is very sad, but…”

“Exactly. It’s sad, but common nowadays. This kind of death isn’t news anymore, and it’s hard to get a tally because families don’t want people to know about them dying while in a game. In a way, this is also a case of VRMMOs contributing to the death numbers…”

“But you didn’t bring me out here just to talk about ordinary cases, did you? What really happened here?”

Kikuoka took another glance at the tablet before answering.

“There was only one VR game installed on Shigemura’s AmuSphere—Gun Gale Online. Have you heard of it?”

“Well, of course. It’s the only MMO in Japan that has pro players. I’ve never tried it myself.”

“He was apparently the very top player in Gun Gale Online, which they abbreviate to GGO. He won a tournament they held to determine the very best back in October. Player name: Zexceed.”

“So…was he logged in to GGO when he died?”

“Actually, he wasn’t. He was in character as Zexceed while appearing on the MMO Stream online channel.”

“Oh…on This Week’s Winners, then. Now that you mention it, I seem to recall a story about a time they had to cancel an episode because the guest dropped out partway…”

“That’s probably the one. He had the heart attack in the middle of the program. We know the time down to the second, thanks to the recorded log. Now, as far as what we haven’t been able to confirm yet, there’s a very strange blog post someone put up about an event that happened in GGO right at the same time.”

“Strange?”

“You know how MMO Stream plays even within the world of GGO?”

“Yeah, they air it in pubs and places like that.”

“Well, it was being streamed in a bar within SBC Glocken, the capital city in the world of GGO. And at exactly the time in question, they reported that a player was acting very strangely.”

“…”

“Seems he fired his gun at the image of Zexceed on the TV, shouting about judgment and that he needed to die and so on. One of the other players at the scene just happened to be in the process of a sound recording, and he uploaded it to a video site. The file had a Japan Standard Time readout on it, and according to that, he fired at the TV at precisely…eleven thirty PM and two seconds, November ninth. And Shigemura suddenly disappeared from the program at eleven thirty and fifteen seconds.”

“…Gotta be a coincidence,” I said, pulling the other plate in front of me.

I split the brown, circular object with my spoon and took a bite. The chill of the dessert caught me by surprise; I’d thought it was a cake, but it was some kind of ice cream. My mouth was filled with a rich chocolate flavor with only the barest level of sweetness, the bitterness only amplifying the unpleasant nature of Kikuoka’s story.

Once I’d tucked away about a third of the dish, I continued.

“The jealousy and hate the best player in GGO gets has to be far and away worse than any other MMO. It would take some guts to fire a gun at him directly, but it doesn’t seem that crazy that someone would shoot a TV.”

“Right, but there’s another one.”

“…What?”

The spoon stopped halfway to my mouth. Kikuoka still wore his excellent poker face.

“This one happened about ten days ago, on November twenty-eighth. Another body found in a two-floor apartment building, this time in Omiya Ward of the city of Saitama. A door-to-door newspaper salesman got angry that there was no response despite the lights being on, and thought the resident was ignoring him, so he turned the knob and found that it was unlocked. Inside he saw another person on their bed, AmuSphere in place, with a decomposing smell…”

A very intentional cough interrupted our conversation, and Kikuoka and I looked over to see the same two ladies staring at us with the power of floating beholders. Kikuoka had nerves of steel, though, and gave them a slight bow before continuing his story.

“…Putting aside the state of the body, it was once again determined to be heart failure. This one was…well, the name doesn’t matter. Male, age thirty-one. Another influential player in GGO. His character name was…Usujio Tarako? ‘Lightly Salted Cod Roe’? Is that right?”

“There was a guy in SAO named Hokkai Ikura, meaning ‘North Sea Salmon Roe,’ so maybe he was a relative. And was this Tarako on TV as well?”

“No, this one was actually in the game. Based on the AmuSphere’s log, the signal died about three days before the body was found, at exactly ten o’clock and four seconds PM, November twenty-fifth. That about lines up with the estimated time of death. At the time he was at a meeting with his squadron—that’s what they call guilds, apparently—in the central square of Glocken. As he was delivering a fiery speech on the pulpit, a player invaded the meeting and shot at him. You don’t take damage in town, from what I understand, but when he turned to yell at the intruder, he just dropped offline. Of course, this information comes from a message board, so it’s hard to get an accurate picture…”

“Was the player who came up firing the same one as with Zexceed?”

“I think we can assume so. Said something about judgment and power, and dropped the same name as the previous time.”

“…Which was?”

Kikuoka looked at the tablet and squinted.

“Looks like…Death Gun.”

“Death…Gun…”

I put the spoon down on the empty plate and let the name echo inside my head. A character’s name, no matter how goofy it might sound, was a huge part of the first impression you gave to others. The name Death Gun suggested the coldness of black metal to me.

“And you’re certain that it was cardiac arrest that both Zexceed and Usujio Tarako died of?”

“Meaning?”

“There wasn’t any…damage to their brains?”

The instant I said it, Kikuoka grinned in understanding.

“I wondered about that myself, and I asked the doctors who performed the autopsies, but they didn’t find any bleeding or blockage in the brain that suggested any kind of abnormality.”

“…”

“Besides, with the NerveGear—er, do you mind if I bring that up?”

“It’s fine.”

“With the NerveGear, when it killed its user, it sent a flash of microwave power that was so powerful it burned out the emitters and destroyed a part of the brain. But the AmuSphere was built so that it couldn’t emit waves that strong. The developers swear that it only sends exceedingly low-level information signals to the sensory center of the brain.”

“So you’ve even checked with the manufacturer. Quite a lot of legwork you’ve put into a conclusion provided by coincidence and rumors, isn’t it, Mr. Kikuoka?”

I stared at the narrow eyes beyond the glasses. For an instant, his face went blank, then he chuckled.

“Being stuck in a dead-end position leaves you with plenty of time on your hands.”

“You should help us advance the front line in Aincrad sometime, then. Eugene says you’ve got a lot of talent as a mage.”

As a matter of fact, I didn’t take this man for the bumbling paper pusher he appeared to be. The reason he’d made his own character in ALO was not out of interest in playing the game, but as a means of gathering information and experience on the virtual world for the sake of his job. The business card he gave me on our first meeting said Ministry of Internal Affairs, sure enough, but even that was suspicious to me. He seemed like he could belong to some other department—more secret, aligned with national safety.

But regardless of that, back when the Virtual Division was still the SAO Incident Rescue Task Force, it was through his efforts that the government was able to enact a system to hospitalize all the players afflicted. Because of that, and his help with Asuna, I usually treated him with 60 percent respect and 40 percent suspicion.

Kikuoka scratched the back of his head and smiled shyly.

“Memorizing those spell words isn’t the hard part—it’s actually saying them. I’ve never been good with tongue twisters. But at any rate, I think this whole thing is 90 percent coincidence or hearsay, like you. So this is all just theoretical. Kirito, do you think it’s possible? Could someone stop another player’s heart by shooting them in the game?”

His words caused a scene to play out inside my head. I frowned.

A shooter…dressed in black, face unseen, pulling the trigger while pointing into empty space. A black, illusionary bullet leaving the barrel, tearing through the virtual wall and into the actual network, as packets of information fly in every direction. From router to router, server to server, the bullet makes hard right angles and charges on its way. Eventually it reaches an apartment, where it emerges from the LAN router on the wall as a real bullet, and into the heart of the man lying on the bed…

I shook my head to clear the image and raised a finger.

“I don’t think it’s completely impossible…but let’s say this Death Gun fellow was able to send some kind of signal to the AmuSpheres of Zexceed and Usujio Tarako…”

“Well, let’s start with that. Is it even possible?”

“Hmm…First of all, it would have to be just a normal signal, not some kind of mysterious, fatality-causing power. Do you remember the panic around the Imagenerator virus?”

Imagenerator was a privately developed mail program from the AmuSphere. The user dove into a virtual space generated by the software and delivered a message into a camera, which the program compressed into a mailable format. When the other party accepted the e-mail, the sender’s virtual body appeared before them to speak the message. As new features like video, sound, and even texture were added, the program turned into a huge hit.

But soon security holes in the program were discovered, and virus mails began to take advantage of them. The moment the mail arrived, if the user was already middive, the program started a forced preview, startling the user with shocking images and sound, usually something sexual and/or grotesque.

They patched it immediately and prevented further damage, naturally, but…

“Nearly every person with an AmuSphere has installed Imagenerator by now. If there was some undiscovered back door, and you knew your target’s mail or IP address…”

“I see…Then you could set the send timer ahead of time, thus enabling you to have the desired signal arrive at the same time you shoot them in the game,” Kikuoka replied, folding his bony fingers and resting his chin on top. “Let’s assume that hurdle has been cleared. But you can’t send some kind of fatal cursed bullet, only an ordinary stimulation signal within the bounds of the device.”

“Meaning a sensation powerful enough to stop the heart…or a flavor, scent…sight, sound…Let’s think about the senses in order. First is touch—the sense of the skin.”

I traced my left palm with my index finger. I recalled the shock I felt earlier, when I found out the chocolate cake was actually ice cream.

“What if you sent a full-body chill, as cold as it can go? Like jumping into a giant ice bath. Could that cause the heart to stop?”

“Hmm…I thought that jumping into freezing water and causing the heart to stop was because the temperature difference makes all the veins contract, placing extra strain on the heart…right?”

“Okay, then that means this idea is out. The brain registering virtual cold wouldn’t have an effect on the capillaries in your limbs, after all…”

“Then how about this?” Kikuoka asked, rubbing his hands together. He almost seemed to be gleeful. “You’ve got tiny insects…not beetles, more of the wormy kind, like caterpillars and millipedes. Someone creates the sensation of being packed into a hole squirming with these things. With visual, to boot. Brr, just imagining it is giving me goose bumps.”

“…”

Against my will, I imagined the sensation.

Walking across a textured terrain, when suddenly the ground beneath my feet disappears, and I fall into a deep hole. Countless long, thin creatures squirm and wriggle, crawling against my skin and into the openings of my sleeves and collars…

“Yeah…that’s pretty gross,” I said, rubbing my arms, “but that’s the kind of prank that happened during the Imagenerator virus. People got giant caterpillars and jellyfish dumped on their heads. But nobody’s heart stopped…I think. Besides, when you’re in a VRMMO, your subconscious is prepared for sudden events. Depending on your location, you can get surprised by a boss at any time. You can’t play the game if your heart stops because of that stuff.”

“That’s a good point,” Kikuoka said, shoulders drooping. He picked up his cup and swirled it.

“Next would be taste and smell. Let’s say that your mouth was suddenly full of a terrible stench…like the taste of kiviak. Anyone who suffers that is going to try to vomit it out. Perhaps that gag reflex will affect their physical body…”

“Wouldn’t that mean they died suffocating on vomit, rather than from cardiac arrest? And what’s kiviak?”

I immediately regretted asking when I saw the sparkle in his eye. He loved talking about tasteless subjects. I suspected this was why he didn’t have a girlfriend, despite his prestigious position.

“Oh, you’ve never heard of kiviak? It’s an Inuit food. In early summer they catch these little birds called auks and stuff them inside of a hollowed-out seal. They leave the seal in a freezing location for several months. Eventually the seal’s fat seeps into the auks and helps them ripen—well, rot. Once it’s good and ready, they take the birds out and eat their innards, which have melted into a chocolaty substance. Apparently it’s even smellier than the infamous surströmming, but once you get used to the taste, it’s addictive…”

Thump! Our eyes were drawn to the side, where the two madams were on their feet, rushing away with their hands over their mouths. I sighed and interrupted Kikuoka.

“I’ll be sure to try it the next time I’m in Greenland. Oh, and I don’t need an explanation of what that sur-something is.”

“Oh. Are you sure?”

“Don’t look so disappointed. And I don’t think even the smelliest food is going to cause someone’s heart to stop. Let’s go to the next sense: sight.”

I took a hearty whiff of the coffee’s fragrance to cleanse Kikuoka’s tale of stench before continuing.

“Same as with the insect idea, I think stopping the heart with a meaningful image won’t cut it, no matter how frightening or cruel the imagery is. Maybe if you dredged up some terrible trauma of the target’s past, but I don’t see how they could figure out what that would be.”

“Hmm. You said ‘meaningful.’”

“Yes. I remember reading about some incident that happened long before I was born, where a bunch of kids who were watching a cartoon on TV all passed out at the same time around the nation.”

“Oh, that. I was in kindergarten at the time, so I saw it all happen,” he said, thinking back fondly. “It was a scene where they alternated flashing blue and red lights, and it caused seizures.”

“That’s probably what I’m thinking of. You send a similar video with all kinds of extreme, exploding lights. Most people will shut their eyes on instinct, but you can’t do that if the imagery is being pumped straight into the brain. Maybe that could cause some kind of shock to the system.”

“Yes, you’ve got a point.” Kikuoka nodded, then shook his head. “But that very problem was raised during the development of the AmuSphere. In the end, as a safety measure, they limited the output of the device. The AmuSphere can’t generate visual output over a certain amplitude.”

“All right, pal.”

I glared directly at Kikuoka, my suspicion leveled up to a pure 100 percent.

“Are you really telling me you didn’t already go over all of these possibilities before this? Why would you come to little old me after all the elite big shots in the Ministry of Internal Affairs put their heads together? What the hell is going on here?”

“No, no, it’s not like that at all. Your ideas are very stimulating; they’ll be a huge help to the process. Besides, I enjoy these conversations.”

“Well, I don’t. As for hearing, I’m guessing they have hardcoded limits on that, too. So that ends our talk. In conclusion: causing a player’s heart to stop through in-game means is impossible. Death Gun’s shooting and the two heart attacks are a simple coincidence. Now I’m leaving. Thanks for the food.”

I had a feeling that allowing this conversation to continue would only lead to bad things, so I made to stand up and leave. But as I suspected, Kikuoka panicked and stopped me.

“Whoa, whoa, wait! I’m getting to the important part. You can order another slice of cake, just hang on for another minute.”

“…”

“Anyway, I’m relieved that you arrived at that conclusion. I agree with you. Their deaths are not related to the in-game shooting. So here’s my request…”

I knew I shouldn’t have come, I told myself, waiting for what came next.

“Can you log in to Gun Gale Online and make contact with this Death Gun fellow?”

He grinned, as innocently and benignly as possible. I gave him my very coldest tone of voice in response.

“‘Make contact’? Let’s be honest, Mr. Kikuoka. You want me to go and get shot by this Death Gun.”

“Ha-ha-ha, well, when you put it that way…”

“No! What if something happens to me? Why don’t you get shot? See how you like having your heart stopped.”

I tried to stand up again, but his arm shot out and caught my sleeve.

“Didn’t we just come to the logical conclusion that it was impossible for that to happen? Besides, it seems that this Death Gun has an extremely rigid process in choosing his targets.”

“…Process?” I asked, sitting down.

“Yes. Death Gun’s two targets in the game, Zexceed and Usujio Tarako, were both well-known for their skills. In other words, I don’t think he’ll shoot you unless you’re one of the best. I could spend years and never get to that point. But the man that even Akihiko Kayaba admitted was the best…”

“I can’t do it, either! GGO isn’t that easy of a game. There are tons of pros playing it.”

“And what do you mean by that? You mentioned pros earlier, too.”

I knew that I was falling right into his trap, but I explained anyway.

“It means exactly what it sounds like: people who earn a living playing the game. Of all the VRMMOs out there, Gun Gale Online is the only one with a game coin conversion system.”

“…Oh?”

Even elite agent Kikuoka was not up on the full breadth of gaming lingo, and I could tell his confusion was not feigned this time.

“Basically, it’s set up so that the cash you earn within the game can be withdrawn as actual money. It’s an electronic currency, not actual yen, but it might as well be, since you can use it to buy anything you want already.”

“But…how do they function as a business? I mean, I assume they’re turning a profit on the game.”

“Of course. Not all the players are actually earning money. It’s like slots or horse racing. The monthly fee to play is three thousand yen, which is very high for a VRMMO. And the amount that an average player earns is maybe 10 percent of that…just a few hundred yen. But there’s a high similarity to gambling in the game’s system—every once in a while, someone gets a rare drop that’s worth a ton of money. They sell that in the auction house and convert the earnings to electronic money—it can fetch them tens, even hundreds of thousands of yen. Anyone who hears that thinks…Hey, that could be me. There’s even a giant casino inside the game.”

“Ahh, I see…”

“The pros in GGO are the ones who earn a constant amount every month. The best players earn around two to three hundred thousand a month, which isn’t that much in real-life terms…but it’s enough for a frugal living. Basically, they’re earning a kind of salary from the membership fees of the majority of the player base. That’s what I meant when I said that the best in GGO get more hate and jealousy than in other games. They’re like government employees scarfing down expensive cakes on the taxpayers’ dime.”

“Heh, you do have a way with words, Kirito. But that’s what I like about you.”

I ignored him and tried to steer the conversation to a conclusion.

“For that reason, high-level players in GGO put way more time and enthusiasm into the game than those in other MMOs. If I waltz in there without any knowledge of the game, I’m not going to get anywhere. Besides, as the name says, it’s a gun-based game…and I’m not good at shooting systems. You’ll need to find someone else.”

“Hang on, hang on! I don’t have any other options. In all honesty, you’re the only VRMMO player I can actually contact in real life. Plus…if it’s too difficult for you to take on the pros, why don’t you turn it into a job as well?”

“…Huh?”

“I can pay you a stipend for research assistance. Let’s say…the same amount one of those GGO pros makes in a month. This much.”

He held up three fingers. I felt a lurch in my gut. That was enough to put together a new machine with a twenty-four-core CPU and have change to spare. But it also raised more questions.

“Something’s not right, Mr. Kikuoka. Why are you so fixated on this case? First of all, I’m positive that this is just one of those weird occult stories that takes on a life of its own. Two people suffered heart failure and stopped showing up in-game, so the rest of the community made up a legend to explain it,” I said flatly.

Kikuoka straightened his glasses with slender fingers, hiding his expression from me. He was clearly considering how much of the truth to reveal, and how much to keep hidden. A shrewd man, exactly as I thought.

“As a matter of fact, the bosses are worried about it.” The bureaucrat was back to his usual smile. “The real-world influences of full-dive technology are under more scrutiny from a variety of fields than anything else. The social and cultural impact is undeniable, but the biological impact is hotly debated as well. They want to know how the human condition is changed by the virtual world. If it’s determined that there is proper danger, it’s possible that a move to regulate will be in the works again. As a matter of fact, there was almost proposed legislation on the matter right after the SAO Incident. But I, and the rest of the Virtual Division, feel that it would be wrong to hold back the tide now—for the sake of your generation, the ones enjoying these VRMMOs. I want to find the truth behind this odd series of events before it gets used for political purposes by those who want to crack down on the technology. If it turns out to be total nonsense, that’s the best outcome. I want to be sure of that. What do you think?”

“Given your understanding of young people playing VR games, I’ll choose to interpret your position as being altruistic. But if you’re really that worried about it, why not go through the actual companies involved? Consulting their logs should tell you who shot Zexceed and Tarako. Even if the registration data within the game is nonsense, you could get an IP address and contact the provider to learn the real name and address.”

“I’ve got a long reach, but not long enough to cross the Pacific.”

Kikuoka’s bitter expression didn’t look feigned this time.

“The developer of Gun Gale Online is a company called Zaskar…Actually, I don’t even know if they’re a proper company, but at any rate, the servers are based in America. They’ve got excellent customer support in-game, but their actual office location, phone number, and e-mail address are all private. I swear, ever since The Seed was unveiled, these VR worlds pop up like bamboo shoots.”

“…Oh, really.”

I looked disappointed, but kept my cards close to my chest—only Agil and I knew the origin of the VRMMO development suite known as The Seed. As far as the rest of the world knew, the replica of Aincrad that appeared in the new ALfheim Online was simply left behind on the old SAO server that the late RCT Progress inherited.

“So basically, if we want to get down to the truth of the matter, we’ve got to make direct contact in-game. Of course, we’ll take every precaution we can in the name of safety. You’ll dive from a room we’ve prepared for you, with a full-time monitor that will automatically disconnect the AmuSphere if its output does anything funny. I’m not asking you to get shot; I just want you to react based on what you see and how you feel. So…are you in?”

I realized that the noose was completely around my neck. There was no getting out of this one.

Regretting my decision to come, I also couldn’t deny that my interest was getting piqued. The power to affect the real world from the virtual world…If such a thing existed, could that be the beginning of the world-changing power that Akihiko Kayaba sought? Was the incident that began on a cold winter day three years ago still ongoing…?

If that was the case, maybe I did have a responsibility to see this unfold.

I shut my eyes, let out a deep breath, and said, “All right. I don’t like being railroaded into this, but I’ll do it. But I can’t make any guarantees I’ll be able to find this Death Gun guy. We don’t even know if he’s real.”

“Ah, yes…about that.” Kikuoka smiled, all innocence. “Didn’t I tell you? One of the players present at the first shooting got an audio log of the room. He brought a compressed version of it to us. It’s Death Gun’s voice. Have a listen.”

He extended a wireless earbud to me. I hope your heart stops next, I thought as I eyed him suspiciously.

“…How considerate of you—thanks,” I said instead.

I stuck the bud in my ear and watched Kikuoka tap at the screen. A low buzz of excitement sounded in my ears. Suddenly, the murmuring stopped. A piercing statement cut through the tense silence.

“This is the true power, the true strength! Carve this name and the terror it commands into your hearts, you fools! My name, and the name of my weapon, is…Death Gun!!”

The voice was strangely metallic and inhuman. And yet I vividly felt the flesh-and-blood human presence beyond that shout. It was the voice of someone not role-playing, but channeling a true impulse to slaughter.