Inside the shut room, only the heater had worked through the night, filling the space with a warmth completely unlike the winter outside. Mixed with his heavy, murky breathing, the air had turned unpleasant, like a fish hidden at the bottom of the water stirring an originally clear pond into filth by moving through it day after day.
The house he had taken over from his uncle had, by now, begun to smell like him.
Empty beer cans lay on their sides in the corners. The ashtray on the table was packed with cigarette butts, and disposable lighters were scattered around like abandoned toy blocks.
The low, stifling heat filled his lungs. It was gentler than cigarette smoke, yet somehow harder to bear, a suffocating heaviness that made him feel as if he were being dragged down to the bottom of a dense, deep sea.
The man who had slept sprawled on the floor all night in that slovenly posture finally moved. He tried to pull himself free from the mottled fragments of a dream, but sleep still stroked his nerves with a lingering softness. His heavy eyelids fluttered open by instinct, and his stiff fingers twitched.
His waking mind struggled against the dull ache of his body.
He cracked his dry lips and reached out with an arm driven by thirst, groping blindly. On the table beside him, his hand caught a half-empty beer can and dragged it over. His head managed only the smallest upward tilt before his hand, already impatient, tipped the mouth of the can down.
The beer had been open all night. The bite of the foam was gone, leaving only bitterness. After a night under the warm air from the heater, it had turned lukewarm too, and that warmth only made the bitterness stand out more.
It did not just go down his dry throat. Some of it spilled over his chin and dripped onto his clothes.
He finished the remaining half in one large swallow, but the hot, bitter liquid did nothing to ease the exhaustion and discomfort in his body. Irritation rose inside him from nowhere. Still not fully awake, he crushed the miserable can in his hand and threw it aside to vent.
It struck the wall with a sharp clatter.
Restlessness and hostility made him sit halfway up, only for a fresh throb of pain to stab through his head. He pressed a weak hand to his forehead and let out a low, pained groan.
He was still thirsty, and his hollow stomach was beginning to send out hunger.
Instinctively, he braced up a body that felt as if it had come apart at the joints and staggered step by step toward the nearby kitchen. He reached the refrigerator and pulled it open. The cold air inside gave him a brief wash of relief, but when he looked more closely, a self-mocking smile soon followed.
All that remained in the refrigerator were two or three cans of beer and a few worthless vegetable leaves.
Had it really been that long since he had restocked the necessities? Looking at those scraps, he felt no urge to use them with leftover rice and make himself something to eat.
He had no choice but to reach in, take out a cold beer, pull the tab, tilt his head back, and drink.
The cold, freshly opened beer hit hard. Gas and foam rolled through his mouth, and the chilled liquid came with a faint prickle. For a moment, that icy sensation seemed to spread through his low-fevered limbs and bones. Maybe it was only an illusion, but he felt his strength gradually coming back.
One mouthful, then two, then three, then four. He drained the can outright, bent over, and let out a rough breath.
Leaning against the kitchen doorway, he looked at his living room.
It was chaotic and unkempt, and that ruined, decaying feeling was far too similar to the person he used to be.
I should have been done with this kind of life after leaving Aincrad.
No. This was only what he had done yesterday.
He held his forehead, trying to shake off the sleepiness.
It was just a simple hangover from drinking too much. The disaster in the living room was only the result of his exaggerated drunken behavior. He knew the feeling of a hangover all too well. Surely every adult had experienced it, and his stomach kept making requests to vomit.
With a faint sigh, he tossed away the empty can, walked to the bathroom, turned on the faucet, and splashed cold water onto his face. The outside stimulation finally drove away what remained of his drowsiness.
He lifted his head and looked at himself in the mirror, staying in that position without a word.
His hair had grown long. The sides covered his ears, and some of his bangs had reached the bridge of his nose. His tired eyes were hidden behind the strands. Stubble had grown along his jaw, sideburns, and lips. As he stared at his reflection, all he could see on his face was exhaustion and decay.
It was not cool. It was not handsome in the slightest. It only showed the weakness of his whole spirit.
How did you end up the same as before? he whispered inside his heart.
As he pushed his hair aside, he found fine strands of pale white mixed in. In truth, he had noticed a long time ago that his hair was slowly turning gray. Ignoring that, he brushed his bangs back, leaned closer to the mirror, and examined his pupils.
Blood vessels spread across the whites of his eyes, irregular as cracks in a shattered mirror.
Was it the hangover?
He fell silent again. After a long while, he laughed once.
No. It was not.
To gain something, one had to lose something. He understood that natural law of exchange, so he did not blame heaven or anyone else. If anything, without these eyes, he would have died long ago in the death game. There would have been no liberation of everyone else, or of himself. Even so... he could not bring himself to be happy about this forced exchange.
At the very beginning, he had still been able to control it.
But when had it stopped obeying him and begun doing nothing but draining him? It always brought him power convincing enough to believe in, but what use was that to Satoru?
He could show off in a false world, but in a peaceful virtual world, heroes and demons alike lost the meaning of their existence. People did not care about that kind of thing.
The power that had once saved him had become a collar tightening around his throat.
He reached for a hand towel and caught nothing but air.
His vision was already beginning to double.
He rubbed his eyes and gave up on wiping his face.
Was I using it, or was it using me?
His brow furrowed as he sank into a line of thought with no practical meaning.
That feverish heart, drunk on false violence and power, was something he could never control. Whenever he stared into that slowed world, that black-and-white world, or even the world beyond it reduced to nothing but lines, an arrogance beyond ordinary people always rose inside him. Faced with anything that came his way, he lost all fear.
Turning fear into wings was how ordinary people became stronger, how they unleashed potential in desperate situations.
He had broken those wings.
Now, whenever he entered that state, his heart filled only with the desire to keep stepping forward. He would not even think about death.
He had thought it would be fine as long as he paid attention and did not trigger it. But the activation was becoming more and more arbitrary. By now, even without entering a FullDive world, it might start on its own whenever it pleased.
Besides, if he left the virtual world behind, where else could he find even the shadow of that girl?
She had been born in the virtual world and had vanished in the virtual world. Perhaps, for her entire life, she had never existed anywhere in reality. If she had, then it had probably been as a string of bytes, numbers, and code Satoru could not understand, something that could be copied, pasted, or even deleted.
That thought gave birth to fear in his heart, the kind of fear that would never exist beneath the Fluctlight.
In truth, bonds were fragile and vague.
He was not a scholar, nor was he an outstanding person. He could not use knowledge to build the kind of far-seeing vision that Kayaba or Rinko Koujiro had. He only wandered through the virtual world by instinct, like a ghost searching aimlessly for somewhere to belong.
If there was any hope, it had to be here, in this illusory world of meetings and partings.
That alone was the only intuition he had, the only confidence he possessed without knowing where it came from.
He left the bathroom and slid down against the wall until he was sitting on the floor.
Tonight... there was still the fight with that guy.
A fight between orphans like us.
The cause had been forged by him, and the consequence had to be borne.
There was no such thing as running away. He had once fled from reality into the virtual world. Was he now going to flee from the virtual world back into reality?
No. That was not right. The day he returned from the virtual world to reality, he had done it openly, with a promise made to her.
He could not run anymore.
Satoru lifted his head, lost and conflicted as he thought through everything. His throat moved, and at last he spoke the first word of his day to himself.
"Sheeta..."
In the cramped room, the whisper vanished almost at once.