Accel World Vol 6 Chapter 4 (1/2)

Chapter 4

Umesato private middle school exists at a corner close to Oume street and Itsukaichi street, in the east side of Suginami ward in Tokyo.

It is small scale in that it only has three cla.s.ses per year, but its site area is pretty wide. North of the 300 meters track placed on the grounds, is the three story first school building which extends east and west, and that central section is connected to the sports building towards the north side. And then on the opposite side, is the again built east and west wards, the second school building. That is, the whole of it can be seen as a katakana エ letter shape.

Each year’s cla.s.ses and student cafeteria is gathered in the new first school building. On the other hand, for the somewhat old second school building, part of the first floor are lined with faculty rooms, princ.i.p.al’s room and student counseling room, with the second and third floor taken over by storage rooms and various specialized cla.s.srooms currently mostly not being used. That is, it is about equal to almost no student goes there. During his first year, Haruyuki used the second school building, third floor male toilet for a «Shelter» was because of this reason.

However, there is a place where students are even less likely to approach, or more like they are not even conscious of it. Further north side of the second school building, is a small and long s.p.a.ce squeezed between concrete walls and high fence wall.

Haruyuki, as a newly established caretaker committee member, went through that damp gap to the northwest corner, to gather at the Umesato middle school corner of corners.

“...This place, our school has one huh...”

While looking at that building, Haruyuki muttered.

It was way too small for a building. The floor was at most 4 meters length and width, and height was 2.5 meters. The left, right, and inside walls were built with natural wood planks even in this age, and the roof was probably slate thatched.

And then the front side was all formed by wire mesh with about 3 cm eye holes. That is, this is a cage. Of course, it is not something for locking up students that did bad deeds. It is a small rearing pen for taking care of animals.

However, not matter how much he put his face close to the mesh and narrowed his eyes, he could not see anything in the small pen. In exchange, there were thick piles of fallen leaves that went in through gaps in the mesh. Under that, without doubt a mountain of micro organisms live there, but they could not be taking care of those.

“There is a caretaker, and an animal pen, but the essential animal seem to be missing...”

t.i.tling his head, he once more talked to himself. Even if it will be transferred here later, he could not understand why this timing.

At that time, he could hear multiple footsteps on gravel from behind. When he turned around in surprise, he saw two students closing in from direction of the front yard. It was one boy and one girl. Their necktie and ribbon color was same blue as Haruyuki’s, but their faces were not familiar so they were probably from different cla.s.ses. This would mean, they were same as Haruyuki, newly appointed caretakers and colleagues, without doubt.

Haruyuki took a step forward to first at least greet them, but quicker than that, the male student shouted in a loud volume.

“Uee, this is so dirty! Leaves are super piled up!”

Continuing, the girl expressed her feelings fully.

“Righttt. It’s no use to clean this. For real.”

From the way they were speaking, these two people must have been selected by lottery instead of candidacy. Even saying so, Haruyuki himself was similar to them. Since he stood up for it on mistaken momentum.

Now matter how it came about, since he got here, he would have to carry out committee activities with these two people on friendly terms. Taking a big breath, but still a weak sound with that, Haruyuki called out.

“Ah... at least, we should decide positions.”

Reading the sent doc.u.ment file after he had became a member, he found out that there were two activities for today. First was to select the president, and the other was to clean the rearing pen. Until both of those are finished, committee members sign the diary file and sent it to school system server, they could not return home today.

Cleaning will be very troublesome, from just looking at the disaster of the pen, so he would like to at least finish selecting positions quickly. Haruyuki waited a few seconds with light expectation for either of those two to say ‘I will do it’. Committee activities is a factor for adding to performance data, and can influence high school entrance, so there are students who would actively like to have a history of being ○○ president.

—— However, at this point no one volunteered, so he understood that at this place no one was going after that point. After confirming that by waiting five seconds and those two people still had their mouth closed, Haruyuki said with a weak smile.

“...Then, I am allowed to be it right, the president.”

While waiting for annoyed response when he could not even say ‘I will do it’, the relatively dark skinned boy for a go home club, and the girl with hair permed to inside curve, quickly made relaxed expressions, and nodded at the same time.

“Sure.” “Yoros.h.i.+ku.”

Three of them ran their fingers on their virtual desktop at the same time, opening the new committee activities tab, and in the positions column they set Haruyuki’s name, then touched the confirmation b.u.t.ton. With this, even in the school local net, Haruyuki would be recorded as the caretaker president.

He also checked the remaining two people’s names, with the boy being Hamajima, and the girl being Izeki. Since it was a three member only committee, there was no need for any position below vice president.

‘—— If it is like this, then I should have become something like library member at the start of school term.’

With that earnest thought, he swung his right hand once to wipe the window. Anyway this meant one job done. However the problem was the other job, cleaning of the rearing pen.

With another look at the pen, even though the walls were dirty, he thought that leaves piled up on the floor would be more troublesome after all. With some of the thickness over 5 cm, they could not do anything without tools. According to the doc.u.ment, they were allowed to use tools from the central courtyard cleaning equipment storage.

“Then, I will go get a bamboo broom and dustpan... will bring it back, please wait.”

After saying that with a mumble, he jogged towards the central courtyard sandwiched on the opposite side of the second school building. Compared to his first year, when he was a pasi going to buy bread, and from behind him came ‘You need to dash, das.h.!.+’, without that being said was way better, which Haruyuki thought about along with other things.

When they actually tried it, the rearing pen cleaning job was far more troublesome than they thought.

If the piled up fallen leaves were dry, then they could probably quickly brush it out with brooms, but this was rainy season even if no rain now. Furthermore it seemed to have piled up over many years, with bottom part mostly becoming muck that stuck to the floor. Old bamboo brooms —— as expected the materials were not natural, but hard plastic fibers similar to bamboo —— could only sc.r.a.pe the surface, not being able to bite into hard layers.

Still, after about twenty minutes of fighting with it, the girl called Izeki eventually said.

“Ah —— enough ——, my hands and back really hurt —— s!”

“Ehehe, like an old lady.”

When the boy called Hamajima mixed that in, he was glared at imposingly. Haruyuki was also given a look that turned him into a statue.

“I am really annoyed. Hey you, aren’t you just barely cleaning the same spot for a while?”

When questioned by Izeki’s half angry tone, this time Hamajima cursed.

“d.a.m.n, shut up. You too, aren’t you just roughly moving leaves I brushed outside? Isn’t that an easy job.”

“Ha? I don’t understand what you mean? Isn’t that a bad way to say it?”

During his colleagues’ moment by moment increased threatening conversation, Haruyuki could only sweat as he moved his broom with high speed. Before a real fight starts, he should interrupt and work it out, but while knowing that, far from being able to open his mouth, he could not even raise his head.

‘—— No. No matter what the process was, I became a candidate for caretaker, then also volunteered to become president. Here I should say something kick a.s.s to those two people. isn’t that my responsibility?’

“...H, hey!”

While that decision was in his whole body, Haruyuki made a sound. The one touch would explode Izeki and Hamajima, turned their glare on him at the same time.

“...H, hey...”

With a large breath of air, and putting strength to his lower stomach, Haruyuki forcefully said.

“...Since this, will not be finished even by time we have to leave school... That is, if you two sign the diary, you can go home already... I will remain for appearance sake...”

One minute later.

With his colleagues’ pure smile and thanks remaining, they escaped at high speed, leaving him alone in the small backyard, which made Haruyuki sigh deeply.

If he confessed in truth ——.

The other two members would be kind hearted girls who love animals, that would lead to his unbelievably heart warming committee activities, it could not be said that Haruyuki did not have at least a milligram of that expectation. But when he thought about it, if that kind of students existed, then a caretaker committee would have been formed way earlier, with this situation as a logical consequence. No, in the worse case, two members other than Haruyuki, could have been outlaw students that had bullied him during his first year. If he thought like that, then he should be thankful for being fortunate.

While comforting himself with those things, Haruyuki took another look at the rearing pen.

Of the fallen leaves piled on the floor, not even half were removed. The clock on his view’s lower right pointed to afternoon 4:15. Since the forced leaving school time is at 6:00, it could be said that he had time left, but against the black layer that almost became dirt, challenging that with just one bamboo broom would be useless. If he really want this pen to look pretty, but.

“...Well, this doesn’t really have to be finished in one day. Since there isn’t even an animal...”

Muttering, Haruyuki threw the broom on his right hand to the ground. Afterward he could just waste time with random game applications till time to leave school, showing appearance that he worked hard but could not finish, to be continued tomorrow. With that thought, he was going to sit down on steps at base of the outer fence, but before that.

‘—— That person also.’

That thought flashed, stopping Haruyuki.

That person, Kuroyukihime, for sure should still have not returned home. In the far away student council room, she must be processing tasks related to school festival that will be coming near the end of month with undivided attention. No, Chiyuri and Tak.u.mu were also like that. Each of them either on the ground or in the kendo arena, would be earnestly moving their body.

“...Everyone, everyday, after cla.s.ses would be doing this kind of things...”

While leaking out a raspy sighing sound, he stared down at his dirty hands. Working hard here, will not be praised by anyone, or get him anything. Then why, for what reason would someone do after cla.s.s activities?

Before, Kuroyukihime had said that she had student council activities so she could control the school local net as a Burst Linker, but he felt that was not all of it. That’s right, for sure, Kuroyukihime, Tak.u.mu, and Chiyuri also, wanted to continually prove something to themselves. Yet, Haruyuki who had decided to take everything seriously just a few tens of minutes ago, was dangerously close to dropping it.

“...Geesh, what a guy I am...”

After blowing out a deep breath, Haruyuki bent over, and picked up the bamboo broom from the ground.

With about 5 minutes work, Haruyuki cleared whatever fallen leaves he could from the pen, then he stopped his hand to think for a bit.

In the matter of efficiency, that was like slacking off. In order to deal with the muck layer before leaving school, more suitable tools and method would be necessary. He thought that large amount of water wash would be best, but the closest water supply was what looked like a tiny faucet set beside the pen for animal drinking water use only.

He tried by turning that, and for sure it only dribble out a slow and unreliable flow, that would take a long time to even fill a bucket. After concentrating with his head hard, he finally remembered that president of a committee, have the right to access a higher level of local net than normal students.

Haruyuki who called out the school map on his virtual desktop, first took water flow line from infrastructure information and displayed it as overlay. There was only one very tiny water color line leading to the rearing pen, but buried underground very closeby, seemed to be a much bigger pipe and supply valve. When he touched that spot and looked around, an AR down arrow pointed to side of the school building three meters away.

“Water flow is over there... so...”

While muttering, he reset the map once, then selected a more than 5 meters long hose from the school supply list and layered it’s position information. Doing that showed him that there was one located in a tools locker, in the male toilet on the first floor of the second school building in front of him. He clicked that point of light, and applied for permission to use from the popup window. Normal students are not allowed to touch supplies outside of their access rank, but one second later, he obtained approval response from the system, which made Haruyuki involuntarily spoke out.

“Oo... leave it to the president. What’s left are...”

He again scrolled the supply list. When he picked up a large shovel, that was in the central courtyard storage so no problem with usage. Finally, he searched for a deck brush. It was discovered in the front yard storage for tile cleaning use, which he obtained permission.

“This should be all. Well, let’s work hard one more time!”

If that was heard by a certain someone, then he would have said with angry sound ‘Don’t imitate me!’, Haruyuki first aimed for the front courtyard and moved out.

Using high pressure water from the hose connected to the supply valve attachment to attack fallen leaves piled up on the rearing pen floor, was an unexpectedly fun job, which made Haruyuki think of “Red type long range skills might feel like this huh” and other things.

However, the strict school system did not give him permission to use unlimited amount of water, so the permitted use water amount bar slowly decreased at the edge of his view. With serious aim, sticking parts were cut away one after another. Since he had to save some water for the final brush wash, he could not use up all the water, so Haruyuki stopped the facet when there was about 20% water remaining.

The floor of the rearing pen, was covered with wet old leaves dissolved from large amount of water, making him thought that the situation became worse than before he started working on it. He had one moment of regret, but with grim determination, he exchanged the hose with shovel, then stepped into the animal pen.

It was fortunate that he was wearing high cut sneakers made from water prevention materials against rainy season, so muddy water did not invade to inside of his shoes. Of course he would have to wash them thoroughly once he got home, but later things can be thought of later.

“Heave... ho!”

While putting out that sound, he thrusted the shovel into the muck, and the tip pa.s.sed through to the floor with almost no resistance. Sc.r.a.ping the floor like that, he scooped up a great deal of black mud. Even with the weight making him stumble, he managed take that out the exit and drop it down.

The less than 20 cm by 40 cm area, finally showed its original floor shape, which Haruyuki gazed at.

A mysterious kind of feeling covered his body. Different from when he completed difficult homework, or fell a boss that killed him many times, he felt the heavy challenge. Since thin tears were going to uncontrollably leak out, he hurriedly shook his head. It was way too early to taste success.

Holding the shovel tight, he took another scoop of the mud and dropped it off. Once more. One step forward, once more.

Just that hurt his shoulder and back, but as if pushed by something to move, Haruyuki continued his work. After taking out one mound, he felt lost of strength, but at the same time he learned how to use the shovel and move his waist, so efficiency slowly went up.

While repeating the steady task, he felt a sharp stimulation at the side of his memory. Before, sometime ago, did he do something like this? However, from childhood on he almost never touched real dirt, and house cleaning was left to his mother’s contracted once a week housekeeping service.

As he forgot even his back pain and earnestly dug in his memory, he finally realized it after about five minutes.

It was not a real world memory. In the accelerated world —— above even that, in the «Unlimited Neutral Field».

Two months ago, he was pushed to fall down the old Tokyo tower when he met Sky Raker the first time, and started his steady training so he could climb the 300 meters tall cliff bare handed. While imagining his hands as swords, he thrusted into the steel like hard walls thousands, and tens of thousands times. That was when the «Incarnate System» —— Brain Burst’s hidden ultimate power’s doorway, the moment he stood there...

“...?”

Suddenly ——.

His thought, somehow, he felt momentarily close to something very important, which made Haruyuki wrinkle his eyebrows.

Even while moving the shovel around, he wanted to catch the tail of that thought.

Incarnate System. Power of firm imagination move the reason of accelerated world, the logic to overwrite events.

In a word, that is tremendous power. A master’s mind power can overcome game rule’s bound, splitting earth and cracking sky. It is a matter of course, that was a supernatural power that should not exist in the real world.

—— But.

But, the real base of that. Was cause lead to results, that simple mechanism was, maybe...

‘Clang’, suddenly the shovel b.u.mped into the wall, which paralyzed Haruyuki’s hands.

“Ouch...!”

He hurriedly blew on his hands, then raised his head up as the pain went away.

After some time, old fallen leave lumps that were all around, had mostly disappeared from inside of the pen. In exchange, there was a small mountain that appeared on the other side of metal mesh, which even Haruyuki was hard to believe that it was all made by himself with just one shovel.

“...When I get to it, I can do it!”

With the previous thought blown away somewhere, Haruyuki stretched widely as he said that. His tense back gave out creaks, but he thought even that pain was exhilarating. Laying down like that would feel nice, but in order to do that, it was necessary to complete another task. There was remaining fallen leaf and dirt that he did not scoop up on the floor.

Haruyuki who came out of the pen, changed his right hand weapon from shovel to deck brush. Then he took the hose with his left hand. What’s left, was to use a bit of water while scrubbing with the brush, and it would become much more beautiful. The time was past afternoon 5:00, but since it was close to summer solstice, there was still plenty of light left. It was very possible to finish work before the 6 o’clock forced leaving school time.

After he returned to the animal pen with high spirits —— Haruyuki realized something.

For the hose’s water flow On/Off, the valve at the base must be controlled. However going back and forth to that faucet would be very inefficient. With that said, if he left water running, then he would soon use up the system allowed amount of water.

“...Hmm...”

He thought hard while looking back and forth between pen and base. However, just this once, a smart way to solve this did not appear. ‘If you are going to monitor water usage, then you should make it so that the valve can be opened and closed remotely!’, that was his afterthought.

If it was like this, then he would have no choice but to go back and forth between pen and base even if it takes more time... with that determination, Haruyuki stumbled towards the doorway.

Going around the dirt mound, a few steps forward —— at that time.

In the center of his view, a yellow radio wave mark icon blinked. Continuing, under it a [AD HOC CONNECTION REQUEST] was displayed.

Ad Hoc Connection was, between multiple Neuro Linker users, a function to connect wirelessly without going through a server. However that was mostly not used inside school. It’s connection speed and confidentiality was worse than Wired Connection, and more than anything, it was a useless function once you log into the school local net.

Wondering who would make this kind of request, Haruyuki looked around left and right, then finally turned around to look behind.

For a while, he could not understand it.

Haruyuki saw a child. There was no problem at that point. It was a girl. That was also not too rare.

However, it was a face he saw for the first time, which was clearly not a student of this school, and before that, no matter how he looked, that could not even be a middle school student, and above everything else, was dressed in pure white exercise wear for top to bottom —— with those, was a situation where it was no wonder that Haruyuki doubted normal function of his eyes and brain.

He rapidly blinked and shook his head, but even with those, the girl in front of his eyes did not disappear, so without any choice, Haruyuki lifted his right hand that was holding the brush, and extended a finger to touch the Ad Hoc connection icon.

At that moment, the radio wave mark and line of words disappeared, and in exchange, a somewhat large window and blinking cursor appeared. It was a chat window for exchange using text instead of voice.

The clearly younger than Niko, and looked to be younger than 10 years old little girl, quickly lifted up both hands after she received connection to Haruyuki’s Neuro Linker. Way too thin and small 10 fingers, slowly opened up and stopped in s.p.a.ce. The holo keyboard home position, as Haruyuki realized that, the next instant ——.

All her fingers flashed in smoke like speed, and right after, in the chat window in Haruyuki’s view, words s.h.i.+nning with pink color rapidly flowed.

[UI> Nice to meet you, and good day. You are Umesato middle school’s caretaker member right? I am Matsunogi school elementary branch fourth year’s s.h.i.+nomiya Utai. For this time, thank you very much for accepting my emergency request. I am sorry for causing you a lot of trouble. It’s a bit late, but I also want to help with the cleaning.]

“...!?”

Haruyuki stood still after being hit with a huge shock. It was not from information in the text.

—— Fast!!

It was incredible typing skill. That many words were input, in just four seconds. If he did not see the input in front of his eyes, he would have to think that was a copy and paste of previously composed article.

Secretly, Haruyuki thought that his typing speed was first, no, he accepted lost to second since he nearly reached Kuroyukihime. At the very least, for information processing cla.s.s’ typing mock test, he was by far top of the cla.s.s. —— That not being something praiseworthy was partly due to Haruyuki’s virtue like thing.

However, in front of him, the little girl’s typing speed was clearly more than twice Haruyuki’s. Wondering what kind of training was needed to obtain that kind of technique, he intently stared at the opponent.

The little girl called s.h.i.+nomiya, no matter how he look at her, did not seem to be a link skill master.

She had a small build even for an elementary fourth year. Limbs extending from half sleeve sports jersey, and above knee length half pants, were worryingly small. Her facial features were pure j.a.panese, with single fold eyes and nose, with the mouth like a cool fixture carved by a master woodcarver in one breath. The deep black front hair was cleanly cut to a line under the eyebrows, and the back was tied up at a high spot. A chic brown leather bag on her back, and a somewhat large sports bag on her left hand.

The refres.h.i.+ng looking shape that made him forget about rainy season humid heat just by looking at her, made him look at he in a daze for a while, then Haruyuki finally noticed the questioning look the opponent was giving him. That was right, he did not give any response since her greeting.

A least, he should say h.e.l.lo to her, but thought that he should also reply using chat here. He wanted to quickly call out the holo keyboard to type a reply, but since he was still holding brush and hose, he hurriedly put them on the ground. At the moment that he brought up both hands again, words again flowed in the window.

[UI> It’s okay for you to speak with real voice.]

“Ah..., I, I see...”

While his arms were raised in a subtle way, he leaked his first foolish sound.

Somehow, there were a lot of things he could not understand. Why was this little girl using chat to talk? What was the «Emergency Request» that she spoke of previously? In the first place, why was another school, furthermore elementary school student appearing in this place? What he somehow guessed, was only the [UI>] letters placed in front of her words in the chat window, which should be her name Utai’s shorthand, UI as a nickname.

While scratching his head with his right hand that had no other place to go to, Haruyuki spoke as he was having confused thoughts.

“Ah, Umm... Ni, nice to meet you. I am Arita Haruyuki... Umesato middle school second year, for the time being, the caretaker president... even saying so, that’s starting from today though...”

Then immediately,

[UI> Yea, I know that your caretaker committee was established today.]

That sentence was typed in high speed.

“Wha, is, is that so? How did you know? Also, why did you come from your school, just to help out...?”

[UI> That, was because a request for cooperation from Matsunogi elementary branch that started your committee.]

“Whatt, is, is that so!?”

Compared to the astonished Haruyuki, the strictly calm elementary student little girl, with more and more perfect keyboard handling, explained how this situation came about in an easy to understand way.

Umesato middle school existing in Suginami ward in the capital of Tokyo, was a private, and supposedly advancement school. However it was not managed by the school corporation, but by an educational type company that had its headquarter in s.h.i.+njuku. That company, other than Umesato middle school, also owned a girls elementary-middle-high all in one school in Suginami ward. That, was the Matsunogi school that s.h.i.+nomiya Utai went to.

Umesato middle school had close to 30 years history, but that could not compare to Matsunogi, which became the 95th year for this year’s school opening. That was, to express it in one saying, a «Rich Girl School». However it could not avoid the whole country’s low fertility wave, and was sold to the current owner company ten years ago due to financial troubles. Afterwards, many rationalization were made, and as a drastic measure, finally this summer, part of its site was sold, and the profits were used to build a new joint elementary and middle branch, which was the decision that was made.

Since it was a traditional school, of course its guardians raised voices of opposition, but the management base was a corporation. The decision could not be overturned, and the elementary branch’s current school building will be knocked down after the first school term ended.

Even saying so, most students welcome a change in buildings. The new school building will start with high spec VR local net, which will lead into the same family of state of art electronic education environment that was being developed in Umesato middle school. However, since the school’s absolute area shrunk, there were also many facilities that could not be moved to the new school building. One of those was —— the old rearing pen built standing by the side of the Matsunogi elementary branch, that was the story.

[UI> Of course, I protested against teachers and management company. The caretaker committee, not only belong to students, but also to animals that were taken care of. Students may just transfer into other committees, but animals cannot do that. However the company only repeated “Animals that were taken care of will be dealt with according to laws and regulations” as a reply. That would mean, by killing them.]

Reading the indifferently spelled text till there, Haruyuki shouted “No way!” on reaction.

Even though it was the mission of public companies to chase after profit, killing animals that lost their rearing place was too much. It would probably be too much shock for children who took care of them for a long time. If they went that far... went, that far...

Haruyuki’s thoughts that were full of anger, b.u.mped into a thick wall there and stalled.

When they reached a point that need to shrink school site due to cost cutting, building a new rearing pen would be difficult, which he could also imagine the company side of things. He felt that then they could let animals be taken into student’s homes, but caring for animal is not possible without a lot of pa.s.sion and proper environment. And yet, releasing them in outskirt hills is out of question, and before that, it is also illegal.

Seeing Haruyuki silent as he bit his lip, the little girl with Utai kind of traditional name showed a slight troubled face. Then her fingers moved again, with text flowing in high speed.

[UI> No need to worry. There isn’t any animal that has been disposed of, yet.]

“What, is... is that so? I am glad...”

He involuntarily breathed out a sigh of relief. Utai’s fingers continued her explanation as if in a dance.

[UI> Seven Bantams[1] that we were caring for were taken in by a farm in Sayama who raise chicken in their yard. Two rabbits, were found by a reliable caretaker within the ward. Just... due to certain circ.u.mstance cannot search for caretaker, a child remained at the end.”

“Caretaker... not found, it’s not that, but cannot search... for?”

Utai nodded. Her hair tied by white ribbons, swayed somewhere above her shoulders. The helm was beautifully lined up, so instead of a ponytail, it gave the impression of the daughter of a samurai that came out of a period drama.

After a moment of thought showing on the same pure j.a.panese face, the elementary student ran her fingers on the holo keyboard. A long time has pa.s.sed since the start of this strange conversation, but there was not a single mistype up to this point, and words she selected were very mature.

[UI> That child, has a bit of complex circ.u.mstance. If it’s not from my hand, it won’t eat food. Once, to let it get used to other caretakers, I let them do the feeding, but its weight decreased as if it didn’t eat anything... More detailed explanation, will once more be given tomorrow when I bring it here, but with that kind of circ.u.mstance, it created the necessity to find a new rearing place within my daily walking distance.]