"Wake up, wake up, Kirito!!"
A "voice" suddenly sounded in my mind, and the feeling of something hitting my head brought me back to reality from the dream. No, that's not true, exactly.
When I opened my eyes with a grunt, I saw Laylan's face.
However, Lilan's face looked a little impatient and she was sweating profusely. When I turned my eyes to the window, it was still night and the room was still dark. It may be late at night, but I wonder what Lelan is doing at this hour.
"What's the matter, isn't it still dark outside, Lilan? Or rather, it's already midnight?"
"Kirito, hurry up! Sinon, Sinon has left here!"
As soon as these words came out, my consciousness completely awakened. Shino thought that she had recovered her memory and it would be dangerous to go out, so she was hit hard. I couldn't believe Shino actually ran outside. Have you ever been poked in your sleep?
"What!? When was that!?"
"I'm going to wake you up! When I was sleeping, I heard the sound of the door being opened and closed. I can no longer feel Shino's presence in this room. Shino is out!"
"It seems that Sinon went out while we were sleeping." However, Lilan, who can use a stronger enemy search ability than me, should be able to find out where Sinon is.
"Lei Ran, where is Shino!? It shouldn't be that far away, right!?"
Lei Lun paused for a while, then turned to look at the city.
"It's so clumsy. Shino seems to have used a teleportation crystal. The reaction is already quite far away. Is this the fifty-third floor!?"
"The fifty-third floor!? The fifty-third floor has just been captured, and the enemy level is quite high! In any case, Sinon is too dangerous by herself!"
"No, maybe Shino went there just for this reason. Anyway, Kirito, let's hurry up! If we don't act quickly, it may be irreversible!!"
The scene at that time flashed through my mind. Ever since I met Leiran, then Diabel, and then Shino, I decided not to make the same mistakes again. I haven't told either of them yet, but at the same time I'm afraid I'll repeat it, I'm afraid of repeating it.
If you can reunite with Shino and hear her memories, you should talk to Shino. Sure enough, I couldn't keep silent about it forever.
But before that, the first thing we need to do is find Shino. The place where Sinon was going was the fifty-third floor - although Sinon's level was quite high, the werewolf monsters there were quite powerful. If they are surrounded and attacked at once, they will be killed in the blink of an eye.
"Hurry up and run again!"
Lilan and I walked outside and immediately summoned the teleportation crystal from the item window. After using the transparent blue crystal in our hands to recite the teleportation crystal, we recited the name of the city on the 22nd floor.
The next moment, Rilan and I's bodies were wrapped in the blue light of the stadium, our eyes turned pure white, and we approached the transfer gate with the now shrunken Lilan on our shoulders. I touched the transfer door, shouted the name of the city on the 53rd floor, and transferred again.
And when we arrived at the fifty-third-floor town where Shino was, we were soaked to the bone. The weather on the 53rd floor today seems to be heavy rain and no wind.
Normally I would just think of it as a terrible rain, but when I thought about Shino regaining her memory, I felt just like Shino's sadness. Most importantly, I couldn't help but lose to the heavy rain.
I don't need shelter from the rain, and I don't need an umbrella. as soon as possible.
"Lei Ran, you have arrived on the fifty-third floor, but do you know where Shino is?"
Lei Lun closed his eyes as if he sensed something, and then opened them again.
"Leave here and go to the northern grasslands! I can feel Shino's presence. At the same time, many monsters are reacting!"
"Sinon, have you come into contact with a monster?" And if there are too many, Sinon's life will be in danger if he does not rush over immediately.
"Damn, hurry up! I'll take you when I leave the city!"
"Understood!"
With Lilan in tow, I ran through the city's fifty-three stories to the court in the pouring rain, attracting the attention of players using awnings and umbrellas to shield themselves from the rain.
After confirming that Lilan had returned to her original size, he jumped on Lilan's back while running and grabbed him firmly. The next moment, Lilan kicked off the slippery ground after the rain, without slipping easily, and started running.
A gust of typhoon-like winds and torrential downpours hit us, and Lelan was moving much faster than we realized as we watched the trees and rocks in the distance pass by with tremendous force.
When the two of us continued running through the grassland while bathing in the rain, we saw a figure sitting deep in the grassland. If you keep your eyes open to avoid getting lost in the rain, you can confirm that the true identity of this figure is a familiar player behind him. His life bar has reached the red zone, and there are multiple werewolves in front.
"That's Shino!!"
"That figure must be Shino." It was very dark inside and it was hard to see clearly, but it had rain-soaked black hair and red, black, and green combat uniforms. There is also that back figure that I have seen many times.
The moment I realized my life was in danger, I shouted out the name of Shino N.
“Shino────────────────────────────────────
◆◆◆
After jumping out of the cabin, I arrived at the fifty-third floor. Unlike the moon coming out on the 22nd floor, it was raining heavily on the 53rd floor, but it felt just right.
"If it rains like this, the players can't go out and there will be no one on the field." With this, you can encounter monsters without anyone disturbing you.
No, no one would interfere, even if a murderer walked out to the fields in such rain - with these thoughts in mind he left the town and went to the fields, crossing a dark, damp meadow. While I was there, I happened to meet a pack of werewolves.
As soon as the werewolf noticed that I was soaked, he took up his weapon with a happy expression on his face as he had found his prey. After all, the people who greeted me were monsters and other non-human beings.
"Normally when I see a monster, I will draw my weapon, but now I have no intention to pick up the weapon."
"I don't care anymore." I would rather be attacked by such disgusting memories, scolded by all kinds of people, and treated as a hateful child
As if aware of my thoughts, the werewolf surrounded me with one-handed swords and began to cut my body one after another.
There was a crunching sound, like a knife biting meat, and an uncomfortable feeling similar to pain. My life bar, which is my remaining life, instantly decreased, turned yellow, and entered an alert state. Then turns red to indicate a warning condition.
With so little life left, this scene would make a normal person scream in horror. That's what I was like before I regained my memory. But for me now, that doesn't matter.
Let it continue to decrease and disappear - while thinking this way, I kept observing the remaining amount of life. When the remaining life is about to be exhausted,
“Shino────────────────────────────────────
Mixed with the sound of rain, I suddenly heard a voice calling me from behind. Moreover, in this world, SAO should be prohibited from calling her by her real name.
"I'm not supposed to tell anyone my real name. Who is that?"
Just as I was thinking this, the sword slashing at me suddenly stopped, and at the same time, the remaining health points that had been reduced to a few points also stopped.
What happened? ——Just when I was muttering in my heart, something big passed by me, my hair stood up all of a sudden, and a lot of water dropped on my back. I looked back and saw nothing. When I looked forward again, I couldn't help but be surprised.
Just now, there were black-haired werewolves in front of me, but now, on their heads, starting from their foreheads, they all have white hair, carapace-like human hair. sword. What's more, the werewolf disappeared without warning, as if it had been replaced.
"You re-run?"
As if in response to my voice, something jumped off Lelan's back and came towards me.
The man was a man with black hair and black eyes, wearing a black coat. It was Kirito who decided not to see him again. I was soaked from head to toe because I had been running in the rain.
"You are Kirito"
Without saying a word, Kirito reached into his arms, took out the green crystal, and muttered "heal". The next moment, the green crystal shattered in Kirito's hands and turned into light and disappeared. It comes back to green, which means it's safe.
Why. I almost spent my life. I thought my hated life would soon be over. Why are you bothering me?
"Very good, just in time"
"Why? Why did you come?"
"Why did you leave suddenly? Whether it was during the boss battle or now, there were too many outrageous behaviors."
"I'm looking back at my actions so far. "The reason why I acted like this during the boss fight was because I thought if the boss hit me in the head, I could regain my memory.
To this day, every time I fall asleep, I try to recall my memories, and when I wake up, I forget them.
At that point, when I began to tire of the disgust of not being able to remember, I came up with a story about being shocked into amnesia, and being equally shocked into recalling memories: rice fields.
If my memory is affected, maybe it will be remembered too - that's why I do this. But the results were negative.
"I didn't expect that I would be reminded of my previous murderous memories."
"Who could have predicted this?" No, no one could.
"Because I thought if I hit myself on the head as hard as I could, maybe I could get my memory back. And sure enough, I was able to get my memory back."
"They ran away out of shock?"
"Yeah. It's more serious than I thought. My memory is so bad. Therefore, I can only despair about life."
"Kirito's eyes saw
be opened.
"What do you mean? What happened to you?"
"If you speak to me, you will flee from me. Please tell me what you want to know. You will now treat me as an abomination."
"I don't understand what you mean by hating children. Shino, can you tell me what's going on?"
Even though his body was soaked by the rain, Kirito's eyes seemed to be filled with soft light. But after hearing this story, that glow is sure to fade immediately. and pushed me away. Don't touch me and tell me you're a murderer.
But I didn't want Kirito to remain silent like this, so I moved my mouth because I wanted to talk to Kirito.
"Okay. There's no one here, so I can talk to you. I can talk about the details, but you don't care about the details."
"I'm used to hearing this, but I'd like you to hear the details."
"I sighed." This guy probably doesn't want to back down yet. This man is not going anywhere until he hears what I have to say.
And, as soon as I finished speaking, the man decided I was an abomination and ran away. Until then, we can always be together.
"Okay. I'll tell you everything I remember.
"I killed someone." Not in a game world or anything like that, of course, but in the real world.
I live with my mom, grandpa, and grandma. My dad passed away due to illness when I was a child. I never recognized my dad’s face, so I have been living with my mom.
"My mother lost my father, but she still loved me very much." When I was little, he read me picture books and sang me lullabies. Mom is in very good health. That's why, for as long as I can remember, I thought I had to protect my mother in an emergency.
"Of course, my mom told me I didn't have to do it, and I was happy with how I felt, but I couldn't stop doing it. "I kept thinking in my mind that I would definitely protect my mother when the time came.
But something happened when I was eleven and I betrayed my mother.
"First of all, I haven't gone out with friends for a long time, so it is my daily routine to go home after school and read books borrowed from the library." It is probably because of this accumulation that I can cook for you. time, read and understand the instructions at a very fast speed. Before I knew it, I was able to read at high speed.
In addition, my mother always protected me, but ultimately, maybe because I felt that I had to protect her, I really didn't like outside interference, so I beat up the boy who hid the indoor shoes. one question. I remember feeling a strange sense of refreshment.
"I love my mother." My mother has always loved me. He truly loved me and raised me.
However, when I was eleven years old, I did something that betrayed my mother.
"There was a robbery at a bank in a small town in the Northeast." According to news reports, the murderer shot a police officer with a pistol, and he himself was accidentally shot to death, but that was a lie. I really killed him. I was there and wanted to protect my mother, so I grabbed the pistol from the robber and shot her. As a result, he killed the robber.
Later I discovered that I had two broken teeth, a sprained wrist, a dislocated shoulder, and scars all over my body. But my physical injuries healed quickly.
"I remember very clearly what happened next." After killing the robber first, I was hugged by my mother. My mother cried and hugged me, apologizing over and over: "I'm sorry." Then the police came, asked me to hand over my gun, and put me in an ambulance and took me to the hospital. At that time, my mother was always by my side. Although I was lying in the hospital bed and undergoing various examinations, my mother was always by my side.
After the doctor's examination, the police came to ask, but they said: "The reason why Shino shot the robber with a gun was not because she wanted to kill him, but because she wanted to protect me. Shino was not bad." He said over and over again Complaining everywhere.
The police seemed to know what was going on here, so they yelled at me, "You're not bad, what you did was self-defense," and told me I was innocent. By the way, I discovered at the time that the bank robber was a drug addict and insane.
"But even after being told this, the wound in my heart has not healed." The wound showed its fangs to me mercilessly.
After that, night after night, the scene of the incident kept appearing in my dreams. The recoil of a shot, the feeling of blood splattering, the moment a man bleeds to the ground. Every time I fall asleep, each one of them seems to reappear in my dreams. I remember jumping up and screaming over and over again and throwing up in the washbasin they gave me. - And it's not just after the dream.
From then on, I wondered if it was something like a firearm. Anyway, as long as I looked at something related to firearms, I could clearly remember the incident, as if I was attacked by something extremely strong. There is no more.
Watching TV in the ward, I saw a pistol in the TV series. I couldn't breathe, my body couldn't move, I didn't know the time, the season, or where I was now. I vomited when I got up after being beaten, and when the beating was severe, I fainted. Because of this, I couldn't watch TV series or movies, and when I realized this, my stay in the hospital was extended and I was referred to a psychiatrist for examination.
As a result of that incident, I developed a condition called post-traumatic stress disorder. I had a lot of counseling during my hospitalization and after I was discharged. Not just one doctor, of course, but multiple doctors. They were nice to me but I couldn't trust them. I took the medicine obediently, but after all, those people just told me "it's hard, it hurts, I understand", they didn't understand anything.
I want you to tell me whether what I did was good or bad, but no one can answer.
"After the incident, I was regarded as an abomination." Murderer, murderer, various words related to murder. Of course, the news didn't report anything about me at all, and the killer died as a result of an accidental shooting, but it's scary the power of rumors in a small local city. Like oil on fire, word spread that I had killed him and everyone knew.
My mom said, "Never mind. My grandma said the same thing before." She loved me just as much as she did before it happened.
"But I can't honestly accept this love." Mom, grandpa, and grandma must be thinking, what on earth did this guy do? I felt cold even when I was held in my arms.
"People in elementary school always viewed me as an abomination." Maybe because of this, I didn't want to live in my hometown anymore, so I went to a middle school and high school in Tokyo. I knew then that no one would bother me again. But this situation only lasted for about a year. By the third year, there were many people cheering me on and bullying me.
"Of course I couldn't feel any heat or warmth there."
Elementary school students, junior high school students, consulting doctors, mothers, grandfathers, and grandmothers are all cold. To me, the world became as cold as the North Pole or the South Pole.
"There is no place for me anywhere." Yes, it is strange to kill someone without being punished. No, this must be my punishment. You kill a person and from now on, you will be forced to live in an extremely cold world. This is your punishment.
"Whether it was because I thought this way or because I still wanted to protect my mother, I began to think about becoming stronger." If I become stronger, I can endure this cold world, and if I choose to commit suicide, I It felt like I couldn't bring back the people I killed.
"But even so, I don't regret killing that man." Partly because I wanted to prove a point, I kept thinking about getting stronger.
"It was that time." My mother asked me to consult a psychiatrist at a major hospital in Tokyo.
I dubiously went to the hospital to see a doctor, but my encounter with the doctor shocked me. How can I put it this way? Compared with other teachers, he is very frank and listens to me very gently, almost like a friend. I can talk to him about anything. Trauma, guns, everything.
The teacher listened to me kindly like a friend, accepted me, gave me various things, and finally suggested me to use Medicuboid. There may be a lot of things we can't talk about in the real world, so I told him to talk about it in the VR world. So I used Medicuboid.
Then I joined SAO.
"like this."
I finished speaking in one breath, but Kirito's eyes never left me, and he continued to listen to me while being soaked. However, from my experience so far, I feel like I already know what Kirito will say next.
"You see, I'm a murderer. A murderer who has nowhere to go, no, shouldn't be anywhere."
"you"
Kirito finally spoke. Rain poured into my mouth, but I continued talking without fear.
"You said you won't die, but now you clearly look like you are going to die. Why is that?"
"The reason I'm dying." Until now, no matter how painful the attack, I never thought I was going to die.
"Is it because I'm afraid of losing everything, or is it because I don't want to make my mom, grandpa, grandma sad?" That's part of it, but I think it's better to think about, if I die like this, that person won't be able to live.
"But until just now, I thought I was going to die. "I was ready to die. That is
"I'm tired."
"What are you tired of?"
"I will be betrayed. I have lived with you until now. If I tell you this, you will definitely reject me. I will lose my position."
"My mother, my grandfather, my grandmother lost their place, and I lost my place." Once again, I was about to lose my place. I hate the idea of having nowhere to go. "
""
"But you know what, Kirito. I don't think so anymore.
No. I may have thought about dying at one point, but not now. I'm used to being alone. You don't have to live anywhere.
"That's why I can live alone." Live alone, fight alone, die alone. This must be my destiny. Thank you for meeting you again and allowing me to confirm again. "
Just as I was about to stand up, Kirito touched my shoulder with a wet hand. A bad feeling ran through me and I shook it off.
"Do not touch"
Kirito shook his head.
"You're wrong, Shino. No one dies alone. When a person dies, those among others die with him. I already have Shino in my body. "If Shino dies, the one in my body will die too. Shino will die too. "
Although Kirito was soaked by the rain, his eyes were still shining and full of charm.
"And, Shino, you are dead wrong. You said you had no place to live, but in that wooden house, Shino, Leiran and I have lived until now. There is no place to live."
Kirito continued to put his hand on my shoulder.
"Shino, let me tell you, it would be a lie to say that you don't have a sense of belonging.
"What are you talking about?" Is it because I selfishly think I don't have a place to live?
"Although you despise me, you call me a murderer."
"No, I have no place to belong. I have no place to belong to someone like this."
“There is no such thing”
"that's right"
"Not that"
No matter what I said, Kirito flatly denied what I said. Not long after, I heard a crunching sound in my heart and spat out a sentence.
"Well the world does have that house, so you might say I have a place where I belong. But if I go back to the real world, it will disappear. No!"
"There is no such thing."
"that's right!"
"This is not true!"
The creaking in my heart grew louder and louder, and finally turned into the sound of things collapsing. The next moment, thoughts were traveling from my heart to my chest, from my throat to my mouth, and words like never before.
"Why can you say that! You say so much, you say so much"
"Then, you are my destination!! You will protect me forever!!!"
