Rakudai Kishi no Eiyuutan - Volume 4 Read online

  Giving his gratitude, Ikki ended the call. In the end, he didn't obtain any great information. If Kagami who always had an ear out for such things didn't know, then there probably was little information on Amane available.

  "Aren't you overthinking it? You probably just have a fatally bad compatibility with Amane. Maybe you killed each other in a past life, or fought for the same lover. Or maybe it's true from both sides."

  "Maybe that's how it is."

  "Well, I think everyone has someone he can't get along with."

  Can't get along with. It would be good if his discomfort went that far and no more. However, since he himself couldn't explain the reason for the weird feeling he had about Amane,

  "Yeah. …That's right. It's probably just that."

  He had no choice but to agree. But even if he told himself to agree, he couldn't wash away the eerie feeling those false words left clinging to his heart.

  What settled in his heart, that he couldn't put into words, was—an evil omen. An awfully unpleasant premonition. This is what Ikki thought as he looked at the restaurant exit that Amane had exited through: that he had met something tremendously fearsome just now.

  Chapter 2: Scheming Maneuver

  Part 1

  Around the time that the sun's weak rays reached the ground of the snowy country, Alice had finished the work that the crime gang of his hometown called him for, and was on his way home.

  The air temperature of the time near dawn was murderous. Against the stinging cold, the feel of the scarf that his little sisters had made and given him was heartwarming.

  「Hey there, Alice.」

  A loud voice suddenly descended from high. When he looked up, a red-haired girl was walking on top of the stone wall above him. While laughing at the thought that she looked just like a cat, Alice returned the greeting.

  「Yuuri… it's rare for us to go back together, isn't it?」

  「Yeah, right?」

  Leaping down the two meter wall, Yuuri stepped next to Alice.

  And hugging her shoulders, she shook with cold.

  「Ooh, so cold so cold. That scarf looks really warm. How nice.」

  「Ha ha, are you envious?」

  To Yuuri who was sending a greedy look, he showed off the fluffy scarf.

  「Lend it to me for a while.」

  「Never. You'll get it dirty immediately, Yuuri.」

  「Uuu…. A boy letting a girl freeze, how terrible.」

  「You're only a girl when it's convenient. …But….」

  Alice invited Yuuri closer, unwrapped the scarf around his neck a little, and pulled it over Yuuri's.

  「There. This way we can both use it, right?」

  「…It-It's a little embarrassing….」

  「Isn't it fine? Embarrassment makes you even warmer.」

  To Yuuri who was showing a rare girlish blush on her cheek, Alice gave a mean smile.

  The two of them walked side by side along the deserted neighborhood's brand new street. Along the way, they chatted about the rite of passage with the two younger boys from before.

  「The way those two wanted become adults, it was pretty impressive, wasn't it?」

  「We picked them up around two years ago, huh? But they're still brats. When we were their age, we were a lot more strong-willed.」

  At the mention of their younger selves, Alice made a bitter expression.

  「…I don't really want to remember those times.」

  「It was harsh, huh? The stab wound I got from you is still there, you know?」

  「We're the same as far as that goes. Because I lost to you, I'm still below you, so don't play innocent.」

  While pouting sourly, Alice reminisced a little about the old days.

  Alice and Yuuri were both orphans with abilities. Because they had half-baked powers, it took a lot of blood and time getting to the kind of calm relationship that existed between them now. The number of fights that went almost to the death because there weren't enough food or beds to go around was more than they could count on one hand.

  But both of them had grown tired of those days, the kind of empty days where they stole from others to benefit themselves. So the two of them ended those barren days by drinking that alcohol and making an oath.

  If everyone could be as strong as they were then, many children surely could have been protected. That was why they were no longer using their powers to steal, but to care for people beside themselves. In that way, they had become cool adults.

  Since then, they had lived as they had vowed over alcohol. Pulling together a team of powerless orphans, the two watched over them all.

  「…It's certainly true that we also tried to kill each other along this street, huh?」

  「Yeah, the way this place is now is much prettier compared to back then.」

  Exactly as Yuuri said, the street that the two were walking along was covered in beautiful white stone, and the buildings along the road had been coated in new paint. The places they had competed in, the familiar road of neglected stone pavement which even cars could not traverse properly, was a place where a traveler who didn't know anything would have all his possessions stripped away in a matter of seconds.

  And there was a reason for the change. That was―in places here and there, there were emblems stretched out on the walls, each of five colored rings.

  「What a big festival. Since people come from all over the world, this place can't be seen as dirty, probably.」

  「A disgraceful place, huh…?」

  Yuuri let out a dark mutter. In response, Alice guessed what was in her heart immediately.

  「―The government people came again, right?」

  「Yeah, yesterday.」

  …Although it was poor, Alice liked his current life. Even if it was modest, it was good as long as everyone could live. But recently, the Olympics had drawn near, and the world was wildly enthusiastic, so his livelihood had been pushed into the shadows.

  Hunting the homeless.

  The country, the city, they didn't want to show disgraceful things. The adults who thought so held a conference in a nearby neighborhood and began evicting the homeless and the street children.

  They offered no care to those they evicted. They just drove them out with rods and kicks. And the people who were doing this hunting had marked Alice's team.

  「Those bastards. If they only came for you and me it'd be fine, since we have abilities.」

  「It's out of the question.」

  「Yeah, I guess. What would happen to Natasha and the others? Since even the Sister knows that much, she can only keep turning them away. It's not pleasing at all, those government people.」

  「Well, looking at it from their side, us sponging off the tourists would be very shameful, right? It would embarrass them.」

  However, Alice and the others couldn't say "yes, we understand" and leave. Being forced to go somewhere they didn't left or right from during this remarkably cold and severe season was no different from a death sentence.

  「If Natasha and the others could be sent to an institution at least, I wouldn't mind leaving, but―where would we live by ourselves?」

  「That's also difficult, huh…? If leaving was that simple, people like us wouldn't be idling about in a place like this.」

  As Alice said, homeless children was a social problem that entire country had to carry. Therefore, these was no way to save them. No, it may be possible, but at least the administration had no intention of doing it. They were busy building the street that wasn't being used yet, or the art museum with no display items, and had nothing left for looking after street children.

  So they had to live by their own power. And in order to live, they couldn't let themselves be driven out of the neighborhood in this season. However―

  「But ultimately, I think it's about time for it.」

  Yes, Alice muttered his true opinion. In response, Yuuri also nodded.

  「……We've received a lot from the Sister
, huh? We can't give her any more trouble, after all.」

  The Sister who had sheltered them in the storage shed was a good person. While taking care of a penniless church in a rundown district by herself, she provided them with soup out of her own funds. They had not lived even ten years, but she was the first person the two of them had met who was so kind. But… for that reason, the Sister had been yelled at by the city government, and the image of her being belittled and abused was something they could not bear to see.

  「Then it's decided!」

  Suddenly, Yuuri pointed a finger at the sun ascending into the sky to Alice's side.

  「Alice, after this winter ends, once it becomes a little warmer, we'll all leave this neighborhood. Let's go south. I'm already tired of cold places.」

  You're pointing to the east, though….

  She was probably pointing toward warmth, but Alice didn't say that as he nodded.

  「…Yeah. That's fine. Let's find a warm town.」

  In truth, Alice had also been thinking of speaking to Yuuri about looking for a warmer place to move to. The younger brothers and sisters who they looked after had grown up enough that they had the strength to go. If they can just get through this winter, they can surely make a long-distance trip.

  「We'll aim for the equator!」

  「We're traveling for the first time, so let's take it a bit easier.」

  Alice said it in amazement, but his expression was not as annoyed as one might think. He was also dreaming of starting a journey in the spring. It would be nice if there was a new city, a place in the southern countries that was easy to live in for everyone.

  But―in the end, that promise of finding a new place to live would not be fulfilled.

  Disaster would suddenly strike, and his modest happiness would be sharply broken.

  Suddenly, next to the service road that Alice and Yuuri were walking, a black automobile passed, and the old person sitting in the car's back seat gave an exhortation to his secretary who was driving.

  「…The renovation of this area isn't proceeding well, is it?」

  「Eh? I don't believe that's true, sir. The pavement of the service road has almost been repaired, and the repainting of the walls is also nearing completion.」

  「In the corner of the street just now, I saw something squalid.」

  「…The street children?」

  「You can cover the town with Persian carpets, but having such seedy brats running around on them would render them completely pointless. It would affect our good name if beggars were cluttering the city during the Olympics.」

  「But street children are a problem all over the country, so what exactly can we do…? And the area around here is the territory of a group led by that Yuuri kid, and though most of them are very young children, the two leaders both have abilities, so it's quite troublesome for our personnel to deal with them….」

  「Cowards. Why are they trembling over nothing more than two brats?」

  「…Then, you want to have the police evict them by force?」

  「Don't be ridiculous. Since the beginning, the police chief has been aiming for the seat of mayor. If he gave such an order, his opponents would gleefully use negative campaigns calling him on such inhumanity.」

  「Then… what should we do?」

  The secretary, to the boss who was doing as he pleases without caring for the hardships in this place, asked this in a bored tone. In response―the old man spoke as if it was trivial.

  「Send rubbish to clean up rubbish. We can even save on labor.」

  He said so as relaxed as if he was making coffee.

  Part 2

  Late at night on the second-to-last day of Kyomon and Hagun's combined training camp, it was unfortunately raining. Not strongly enough to be a storm, but large powerful drops were coming down and hitting the windows noisily. While listening to it as if it was a rather delightful sound, Hagun Academy's newspaper club chief, Kagami Kusakabe, was in the accommodations kindly lent to the newspaper clubs of all the schools by the nearby institution. She was sorting through the data she had gathered during the training camp period.

  Under the small light of the desk were many basic documents, the contents of many interview transcripts, and the information on each school's team traded between the newspaper clubs. The thing displayed on the laptop resting on the stack of documents was information on other schools' training camps collected by her staff members.

  Checking all of that information from a big-picture perspective―the trends of the seven schools during this training period and the analyses of their respective fighting power―would allow her to come to a conclusion about the number of special cases during this Seven Stars Sword-Art Festival.

  ―It was the kind of work that would lead to discovery.

  The imputus for this was the telephone call from Ikki who had been worried about Amane Shinomiya.

  Speaking frankly, Kagami wasn't very interested in Amane Shinomiya. There were surely many mysteries among the teams. The powers they held were often not clearly known. But that was not just limited to the nameless newcomers who had no experience from the middle-school league. To begin with, the schools didn't go around blabbing about their Blazers' abilities, because there was no benefit to revealing one's own team members' information.

  Moreover, this year there were several participants, not even including Amane, who had not been experienced representatives during the middle school years. Because of this, Kagami hadn't recognized Amane as more than one of the nameless newcomers, so she hadn't felt like investigating him deeply.

  Ouma Kurogane, the Sword Emperor of Wind. Stella Vermillion, the Crimson Princess. And Yuudai Morboshi, the current Seven Stars Sword King. There were contenders who attracted more people's attentions.

  However, Ikki's phone call had caused interest in Amane to sprout in a corner of her mind, so Kagami had searched through the data on the seven schools to casually satisfy that interest. As a result―

  "…What is… this…?"

  Kagami was astonished. Though the mountains of Tohoku were cool even in the summer, beads of cold sweat dripped down her back. What was in front of Kagami's eyes was Amane Shinomiya's school grade report that she had gotten at great effort. The results of coursework-mandated mock battles were there.

  Six battles, six wins―six victories without combat.

  Kagami had collected the mock battle summaries for many contenders as part of the newspaper club, but she had never seen a record as weird as this.

  No, wait, if I'm talking about things I haven't seen before….

  She's probably seen a battle record as odd as Amane's before, right? What she hadn't been paying attention to up until now, Kagami was forced to remember.

  …Entering the Seven Stars Sword-Art Festival himself as a nameless newcomer. There's never been anyone like that before.

  It was an ordinary trend. If she thought of how things have been up to now, wouldn't that be expected? People who had power would desire everything they see in the world. In this world, there were many influential people who chose to be representatives in their first year, but…

  It's as if someone had gathered all the people in the world who hadn't shown up until now.

  Suddenly, Kagami felt it. As if she was in the process of realizing something preposterous. And that realization was preposterous even for someone who wasn't a student.

  But because of that, I can't let it go.

  Because she remembered that sense of discomfort, not investigating would be….

  She was a reporter. Therefore Kagami gathered up all of her materials and questioned the discomfort within her. The information about all the seven schools' representatives. The schools' board members, and the members of the Seven Stars Sword-Art Festival steering committee. Furthermore, the list of sponsors collaborating with the administration. She examined the big picture of all the components of the Seven Stars Sword-Art Festival.

  ―And after a few hours had pa
ssed, it was the dead of night. Kagami Kusakabe had come to a conclusion. The exceedingly high abilities that she had polished as a reporter every day, they had arrived at the truth she had come to realize.

  There's no mistake.

  Kagami stared at the list of names in this year's Seven Stars Sword-Art Festival, the names of the seven schools' representatives, and moaned.

  "…Among the seven schools, there's… an extra one…!"

  At that moment. Burning heat penetrated Kagami's back.

  "―Eh?"

  In front of the documents Kagami was looking at, she could see a dark gray knife emerging from her chest for a moment.

  Kagami knew the shape of the knife that was illuminated by her desk lamp.

  …I… knew… it."

  The knife that emerged from Kagami's chest was the Device called Darkness Hermit. And the owner of that Device was….

  "A…lice…-chan…."

  Mustering the last of her strength, Kagami shifted her focus behind her. There, she saw a cold face that looked nothing like the schoolmate she saw every day.

  Her schoolmate―Nagi Arisuin opened the lips on that cold face. Without a trace of emotion, a voice emerged from those corpse-like lips.

  "You're a little bit too smart."

  And then he withdrew the knife, making a squelching sound. At the same time, Kagami's body fell to the floor among the mountain of documents.

  You can't….

  She didn't have any strength to lift her body or run away. The forced blackout from a fatal wound delivered in illusionary form stole away Kagami's consciousness.

  Senpai… Stella-chan… watch out….

  So Kagami prayed. From her throat that could no longer cry out, she tried to at least deliver her hopes.

  This year's Seven Stars Sword-Art Festival… is hiding a monster…!

  And so, Kagami Kusakabe fell into darkness.

  Part 3

  Crouching on one knee, Arisuin observed the fallen Kagami. She had entirely lost consciousness. With her like this, she would probably stay asleep for an entire day.