Chapter 1

Yuuma opened his eyes. Everything was dark. He blinked several times but still nothing. His own frantic breathing and the pounding of his heart echoed in his ears. He seemed to be lying on top of something soft, but it felt different from his bed at home. The first hints of panic began to grip his chest, spreading like ice water and leaving the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet damp and clammy. He blinked again and tried to think. Yuuma… His name was Yuuma. Yuuma Ashihara. He was eleven years old and in the sixth grade at Yukihana Elementary School. The date…was May 13, 2031. A Tuesday. The afternoon maybe? And the place… Yuuma balled his clammy hands into fists and tried to remember, but for the life of him, he couldn’t recall what he was doing in this darkness. He knew that something had happened. Not here but in another place. Somewhere bright and exciting… But where? A series of images suddenly raced through the back of Yuuma’s mind. A grassy plain stretching out as far as the eye could see. A girl smiling happily. And a sky so blue, it made your heart ache. And then suddenly, a flash of light against the blue. And… “Ah… Ahhh…!” Yuuma shouted in a hoarse voice, reaching up reflexively to protect his head. Instead, his hands came into contact with something just above him. He flinched and pulled back, then he reached out once more in trepidation. It was some kind of wall. Slightly curved and lined with thin padding… No, not a wall. A lid. He was completely enveloped, as if in a cocoon. Yuuma realized what it was. He finally remembered what he was doing there. He was inside a Caliculus—a full-body capsule designed to virtually simulate physical stimuli for the person inside while also scanning their brain for motor commands. That’s right: Yuuma had entered the Caliculus capsule of his own free will in order to play a virtual game. A true fulldive VRMMORPG. Yuuma wasn’t sure why the Caliculus had lost power, but he knew there should be an emergency exit lever somewhere inside. There’d been an orientation before entering the game; Yuuma had been too excited to listen closely, but he tried to think back to what he had been told. He reached down with his left hand. Fumbling around the curved surface of the capsule’s interior, his fingers found a lever shaped like a car door handle. He gripped it apprehensively and pressed down on the lock release button on the lever’s tip, just as he’d been told. Now all he had to do was pull up on the handle and the lid should open. Yuuma took a deep breath and prepared himself. It was probably paranoia, but it felt like the oxygen inside the capsule was growing thin. Suddenly, Yuuma heard what sounded like a scream coming from somewhere far away. No, not far away. These Caliculus capsules were meant to be soundproof. The fact that he was able to hear the scream even from inside his pod meant that it must have come from someone very close by. Someone close by and screaming bloody murder. Yuuma strained to hear more. His left hand, slick with sweat, still gripped the handle. After several seconds, however, he still heard nothing. What was happening out there? At this facility? Don’t. Something told Yuuma not to open the lid yet. He took his hand off the lever…but then immediately gripped it again. The building he was in was called Althea. It was an amusement complex that had just been built in Nozomi City, Yamanashi Prefecture. Yuuma hadn’t come to Althea all on his own, however; his entire sixth-grade class, Homeroom 6-1 of Yukihana Elementary School, had been invited there that day for Althea’s grand opening. They had come by chartered bus, chaperoned by two of their teachers. There were forty-one students in total, including Yuuma; his best friend, Kenji Kondou; Yuuma’s next-door neighbor and childhood friend, Minagi Sano; and of course, Yuuma’s own twin sister, Sawa. Many other adults were also present for the event, but if whatever was happening now was affecting the whole center, it was entirely possible that no one was able to keep the students safe. Minagi was the quiet type; she might be holed up somewhere alone and crying at that very moment. And Sawa had always been headstrong—who knew what kind of trouble she might be causing? Yuuma couldn’t leave Kenji to look after both girls on his own. Kenji was far too laid-back for that. Yuuma steeled his nerves and at last pulled the emergency lever. The lock released with a thud, and the lid of the Caliculus shuddered open by a few centimeters. Thin wisps of light seeped into the previously pitch-black capsule. Yuuma had been holding his breath. He finally exhaled. The weak orange light streaming in through the crack in the lid was probably the emergency lighting. Apparently the entire building had lost power. Yuuma pressed his nose to the opening to get a breath of fresh air. He inhaled… “…!” …and his face scrunched up involuntarily. A strange smell hung in the chilly air. Not so foul that it would make one retch but raw and metallic. It clung to the back of Yuuma’s nose, making him feel slightly nauseous. He paused, straining his ears, but all remained quiet. Gathering up his courage, Yuuma pushed on the lid of the capsule with his right hand. The lid lifted with a hydraulic whoosh, and more of the room suddenly became visible. Yuuma sat up slowly, the capsule’s cushion still beneath him. The first thing that caught his eye was a gently curved wall, located just five meters in front of the capsule. The words PLAYROOM 01 were written on the wall, lit faintly by the orange glow of the emergency lighting. Yuuma remembered that Althea had nine playrooms, each of which was equipped with eighty Caliculus capsules. He and his classmates had been placed in Playroom 01, which was located on the center’s second floor. Next, Yuuma looked to the left and to the right. There were rows of capsules on either side of him, identical in design to the one that Yuuma was sitting in, all positioned to face outward. During orientation, Yuuma remembered being told that caliculus meant “bud.” That made sense. The narrow capsules were arranged in a circular pattern that honestly made him think of lily buds. As if together they all formed a single closed flower. When Yuuma and his classmates had entered the room, however, the capsules had appeared stark white under the glaring fluorescent lights. Now, under these orange emergency lights, they reminded Yuuma of insectile cocoons. The capsules were lined up as far as Yuuma could see. He counted more than twenty in total before they curved out of sight. About 70 percent of the capsules were open; the rest remained closed. Several of the open capsules were also badly damaged, as if something had happened to them. The capsule directly to Yuuma’s right, the one that Kenji had been using, was open and empty. The two capsules on Yuuma’s left, containing Sawa and Minagi, remained closed. There was no way to tell from the outside if the two girls were still inside. Yuuma started to examine the rest of the room. The massive playroom was over thirty meters in diameter. There had been eighty players in the room, including Yuuma’s classmates, but at the moment, there wasn’t a single person in sight. There were no voices or other sounds, either. Yuuma began to wonder if he had just imagined the scream earlier. The strange metallic odor, however, still hung thickly in the air. First things first. I should probably open Sawa’s and Minagi’s pods. With that thought, Yuuma hoisted his legs out of the left side of the Caliculus capsule and placed his feet into the sneakers waiting there. He grabbed on to the handrail and hoisted himself to his feet. After some momentary dizziness, he carefully proceeded along the narrow platform that wrapped around the capsule. Yuuma stopped at the edge of the platform and peered down at the walkway below. There was nobody there. He began to creep down the short staircase attached to the pod, instinctively trying to remain as quiet as possible. The rubber-lined walkway below was littered with bits of plastic, metal pipes, and other items, probably from the broken Caliculus capsules. Yuuma immediately headed toward the capsule to his left, avoiding the debris as he walked. Each Caliculus capsule was raised approximately two meters off the ground, probably to protect the privacy of the player inside. At just 152 centimeters tall, Yuuma was too short to reach the pods with his hands even if he stretched onto his tiptoes. He would need to climb up to the platform in order to pull the exterior emergency release lever located on the side of the capsule. He was just beginning to climb the stairs to his sister, Sawa’s capsule, when— Splash. A wet sound caught his ear. Yuuma turned to the left to see what had made it. “Ah…” A hollow noise escaped Yuuma’s lips. There was someone standing there at the other end of the curved walkway, just a few dozen meters away. He could just barely see the person’s silhouette underneath the dim emergency lights, but he could still make out their lower half. A pair of long, slender legs wrapped in knee-high black socks, no shoes, and above those delicate knees, the hem of a pleated skirt—part of the Yukihana Elementary School uniform. The figure’s upper half remained hidden in darkness. But it was enough for Yuuma to know who those legs belonged to. Sumika Watamaki. Grade six, student number 21. There wasn’t a boy at school, let alone in Yuuma’s own class—not even a boy in the fourth or fifth grade—who wasn’t at least a little bit interested in Sumika. She was smart, cute, and kind. In fact, she even modeled for a major fashion magazine. She had the kind of looks that could leave a person tongue-tied. No boy was entirely immune to her charms—no red-blooded schoolboy, at least. But did Yuuma dream of Sumika, like all the other boys? Of maybe, just maybe, someday becoming her boyfriend…? No! Of course not! Yuuma was content to admire her beauty from afar. He would never be so presumptuous. Sure…maybe there was that time in the fourth grade when he had lost one of his QREST eyelenses, and Sumika helped him look for it. But it wasn’t like that made him special or anything. It wasn’t like he had a crush… That would be silly! Either way, Yuuma knew this was Sumika just from her knee-high socks. He stepped away from the staircase and back toward the center of the walkway. “Wa-Watamaki…?” As Yuuma called out Sumika’s name, he realized that the lights in the playroom weren’t the only thing that had gone dark. His QREST, attached to the back of his left hand, had also switched off. QRESTs were multilayer thin-film devices powered by the wearer’s own bioelectrical energy. The battery couldn’t run out because there was no battery, and he didn’t remember having turned it off. Yuuma pressed on the center of his QREST with his right index finger as he took a step forward. Sumika took a step forward as well, in time with Yuuma. Her black socks made a wet, sloshing noise. “…?” Glancing down, Yuuma noticed a pool of murky black liquid spreading out beneath Sumika’s feet. Was it oil? Yuuma didn’t detect the solvent, chemical smell of oil. However, the metallic odor from earlier seemed stronger than ever. Yuuma scrunched up his nose involuntarily. Splosh. Sumika took another step forward. The dim emergency lights from the ceiling had now reached her chest, revealing a light blue jacket with a slightly higher waist than the boys’ uniform and a dark red school tie—both splattered with the mysterious black liquid. No, it’s not black. The liquid only looked black because of the dark orange emergency lights. Was it…blood? Was Sumika hurt? “W-Watamaki… Are you okay?” asked Yuuma, stepping closer. His voice sounded hoarse. They were less than ten meters apart now, but Sumika somehow seemed far away. What was taking his QREST so long to boot up? It usually took less than a second. Once his lenses had reconnected, he could turn on low-light vision correction. Sumika stood silently. Yuuma still couldn’t see her very well, but it looked as if she was holding something in her right hand. Some kind of club, white and thick and slightly bent in the middle. That same black liquid was dribbling from its end.