Mission 3, Part 3

“Saruhiko! Let down the ladder! What are you doing? Saru! Do you hear me?”

Fushimi moved his PC, which he left gathering dust in the loft’s corner for two years, onto his desk. Its specs were outdated, but only graphic board needed replacing. He bought new RAM & harddisk too, since after that night he felt disgusted by these two and threw them out.

He was crouching on the floor working with a tiny screwdriver, when the loft suddenly shook and made him miss his aim. He glared beside him. It was Yata, who jumped up and grabbed hold of the rim of the loft.

“I came to pick you up ‘cause I sent you dozens of mails and you didn’t reply any! If you wanna focus on your work, fine. At least read the mails!”

“I dunno. Didn’t get any.”

“Why are you fixing the PC all of a sudden? Aren’t Akito and Hayato more important? Everyone was running around looking for them for the past week. How can the key person stay out of it? You gotta find them to retrieve…”

“Retrieve?”

Yata’s words went in one ear and out the other, but this phrase stuck in his ear. Stopped, but without looking away from his hands, he asked in a low tone.

“What do I need to retrieve? Does the blunder have my name on it? It was you guys who foolishly trusted them just by fighting together merely once.”

“That’s… You’re right. But you see, the way you put it could have been softer. The other dudes are still a bit annoyed at you. Say, according to Kusanagi-san, Blue Coats are still holding old Shiotsu in custody, but the twins are like trying their best to rub the Blue Coats the wrong way. They must be doing that for a reason. So why don’t we sit down and talk with the twins, and solve this ourselves? That’ll solve everyone’s misunderstanding too. You don’t want to kept being misunderstood like this, do you?”

Not one word of Yata’s impa.s.sioned speech could resonate with Fushimi.

Solve everyone’s misunderstanding, you say? Who ever said that I don’t want to be misunderstood? Why do you want me to be understood by everyone when you yourself don’t? … If YOU understand me, I would be content.

But that’s enough.
I don’t need you in my world anymore.

“Hey Saruhiko, say something! Geez, don’t you know how much I consider for you?”

“Ha ha ha ha ha! Are you dumb or something?”

Fushimi raised his head and burst out laughing loudly. Yata, eyes wide open, almost lost his grip. Fushimi himself felt surprised that he laughed in this unnaturally lighthearted way like that guy, but didn’t stop laughing.

“… Saruhiko?” Yata frowned in bewilderment, and then blood rush up his head. “You… stupid monkey!” Red-faced, he jumped down with a thump. “To h.e.l.l with that! Have it your way! I came back for you, and you don’t get it!”

Roughly he spun his skateboard on the floor and kicked it toward the entrance. Hopping on it before the door, he stormed off with it.

“Ha… hah.” Ending his scornful laughter with a sigh, with a serious expression, Fushimi continued focusing on his work, disregarding everything else. 

So he replaced the parts needed, organized the working area from scratch, and connected his PC to internet. Standing in front of him were his PC’s LCD monitor and a hologram screen connected to his PDA, forming an 135-degree angle. This recreated the same environment as that night 2 years ago, in the same room, and on the same loft with a low ceiling which seemed like it’s gonna crash down anytime. The PC monitor was the only light source that lit the room.

“My place isn’t a sanctuary for children who got into trouble to take refuge in.”

Munakata’s voice echoed in his mind. With a click of tongue, he typed on the keyboard harder.

I’ll settle it by myself then, how’s that? I don’t want anyone’s aid. To begin with, that was how I lived. Never had I really needed to have anyone by my side.

Fushimi lost track of time until the light outside reflected on the monitor, making it hard to read. Turning to the window fixed in the wall of the loft, he saw dim sunlight shining through the window blind gaps, blending into the monitor’s artificial light. He turned back to the monitor to check the time. It’s 5 AM.

“My eyes hurt…” Laying his gla.s.ses on the keyboard, he rubbed his eyes. The muscles of his eyelids and eyeb.a.l.l.s became stiff, reminding him that he hadn’t closed his eyes for many hours.

“Also, I need to go to the restroom.” He let down the ladder which he pulled up to keep Yata away. Climbing halfway down, feeling rather pointless to use the ladder, he jumped off. Leaving his gla.s.ses up in the loft didn’t pose a problem, since he knew where things in this room were placed.

Below the loft was Yata’s bed, in a mess, hence indicated that he didn’t come back to sleep. It was just past noon yesterday when Yata came back and chewed Fushimi out. About three quarters of a day had pa.s.sed. Yata would be either outside looking for the twins, or gathered with others in the bar. Whatever. It doesn’t matter anymore.

Not feeling hungry, but the thirst was hard to ignore. So after he’s done in the restroom, he went to the kitchen for the fridge. The bright light in the fridge stung his weary eyes, making him wince in discomfort. He went back up the loft with a bottle of drink randomly grabbed. In the faint light he noticed something different on the pale monitor.

Rushing to the keyboard, he put gla.s.ses on for a better look. The program he had been running came to a stop, showing an error message. That program was for scanning for malware on the PDA externally with the PC.

“Tch… Force stopped by that side, huh.” While clicking his tongue, he showed a faint smile, for things went just as he expected.

There was indeed someone operating this PDA in remote. Fushimi didn’t ignore Yata’s mails. He didn’t see any at all. Someone intercepted them.

Rather than feeling distaste for the opponent, he felt more like laughing at himself for letting his guard down along with the others in Homra. He should’ve known better than to use apps without reliable source, and to input his personal data into the PDA, for he knew there’s a clan good at making use of these, which led to his suffering two years ago.

Not on the PC monitor, but on the PDA’s hologram screen something moved. An app, which he’s certain that he didn’t install, started without him touching it. On top of that, he himself deleted his account in this game two years ago.

The start menu showed 《jungle/β2》.

《jungle/β》, the version that Fushimi and the others played in middle school, abruptly ceased service one day, leaving only a notice saying that beta test ended. That was shortly after the “Surprise Party” two years ago. Fushimi didn’t know that they started beta-2. It must be due to it disbanding its user base as soon as it caught too much attention, and started from zero again, making it difficult to track down the clan itself. Like bubbles from huge deep-sea creature, disappearing right after floating up in the sea of internet data. How uncanny.

Fushimi sat back and watched someone controlling his PDA remotely. After it logged in with an account surely not created by him, an SD character avatar started walking in the Jungle world. Fushimi avoided choosing any obvious characteristics when designing his avatar. But this avatar with black-rimmed gla.s.ses resembled Fushimi IRL, and was actually designed very cute.

“Okay, these accessories gotta be in-app purchases. Won’t that end up with me paying the bill?” Fushimi rolled his eyes and muttered.

The screen suddenly shook like something hit it. Then a message popped up:

【 You have a challenge for duel by ＮＩＫＩ. Do you accept the challenge? 】

The challenger’s screen name caught his attention. An avatar on the other side of the screen posed for battle. Except for wearing different clothes without gla.s.ses, and hair fixed on one side, the choice of that avatar’s face, eyes, and other characteristics were the same as Fushimi’s. They look almost like twins. For a while he sat there staring at the two avatars with eyes wide open.

“…… Ha.” He laughed. “Ha ha ha ha ha…” After laughing so hard that he nearly tugged the cable off, he held back his laughter.

“Very well. I’ll crush you… Fushimi Niki!”

With a preset gesture he slid his fingers across the PDA screen, bringing out a blue translucent virtual keyboard at hand. That someone who controlled his PDA showed no intent in interfering. Fushimi accepted the challenge himself.

The two avatars posed for battle at the left and right end of the screen. In the middle was the ‘jcube’ game screen, evoking somewhat nostalgic memories, even after its many updates Fushimi didn’t follow.

Both players were dealt with a deck of five cards, each card with parameters given by the Rubik’s Cube spinning and hovering above the card. Fushimi’s deck was composed of merely beginner’s cards. Oh well. In a battle against YOU, such disadvantage wouldn’t be big enough to make a difference.

At the starting signal, NIKI’s cubes spun in high speed and soon had three face done, unleashing a combo attack. The opponent must be using external monitor and keyboard too. The amount of information that a small PDA screen can show was very limited, so an external monitor was essential for seeing the big picture.

Since the level of cards on this side were low, soon he lost half of his HP of all five cards added together. But Fushimi merely placed his hands softly on the keyboard, like he’s waiting for something, while the opponent finished one face after another, shaking his screen with powerful exploding combo attacks.

He was not waiting because he got a plan.

… Actually, it had been so long that he forgot the control keys. He used jcube to make money only at the beginning of 7th grade, which was more than 3 years ago. Of course there’s the default system to spin the cube intuitively on the PDA’s touch screen, but that could only spin one cube at a time. With keyboard, by a.s.signing hotkeys with detailed instructions, players can spin all five cubes at once. It’s overwhelmingly fast, and overwhelmingly complicated.

NIKI’s avatar made a laughing face, indicating that he’s in upper hand. Game avatar can only make standard expressions. But Fushimi felt like he saw that man’s twisted laughing face on it.