Chapter Text
"Well, that seems to be everything." A voice remarked from the right, sounding just a touch hesitant.
"It sure does. Which means we have no more reason for you to drag your feet, now let's get to the airport." Kirigaya Kazuto, once known as the swordsman Kirito, remarked with a good-natured smirk, picking up his large backpack almost effortlessly.
Standing next to him was an older, bespectacled man, wearing a full suit. He had a stern-looking face, though the small wrinkles around his eyes and his large glasses turned said look into a much kinder version. He had short black hair that already started balding above his forehead, slicked to the side. Overall, he looked like a typical, slightly older middle-aged businessman.
Of course, the picture was destroyed by the embarrassed look on his face as he sheepishly adjusted his tie out of nervousness.
"Was it that obvious?" He asked with a strained look as his eyes strayed slightly toward the large window at the side, showing the busy view of an airport, most especially people already slowly boarding a plane.
The same plane they should have been already on.
"Yes, you were." Kazuto sent his most deadpan look at that, while slowly starting to herd the older man toward the boarding gate."Considering you spend most of the year traveling abroad from one business trip to the next, I really don't see how you are still afraid of planes, Dad." He commented with a shake of his head.
"Well despite going through a couple of flights, it doesn't mean the anxiousness will fade away just like that." He retorted indignantly, even as he allowed Kazuto to push him forward."I also remember you being just the same when we were leaving Japan."
"That was my first time going on a plane." He replied even as his ears burned slightly."And I have no problem right now, so what's your excuse?"
Of course, anyone would be anxious on their first time in the air. That, and flying in the real world was definitely a bigger deal than flying in ALO. The comment was at the edge of his tongue but he swallowed it back. He didn't want it to become another argument, just before their return home.
By blood, Kirigaya Minetaka was his uncle, but for most of his life, he was his father, since the Kirigaya couple adopted him after the death of his birth parents.
Their relationship was always a bit of a mess to define. Because of his work, Minetaka spent most of his time abroad as an ambassador of sorts for the large multinational company he was working for, because of that they didn't spend too much time bonding as father and son. That and a younger and stupider Kazuto took too much stock on the fact he was adopted, causing him to withdraw and strain their relationship even further.
This last year they got to spend more time together because Kazuto was studying in America and by some stroke of luck, Minetaka also was stationed around the area pretty frequently. Of course, with more time together came the frictions that never had a real chance to show themselves. In short, Kazuto quickly had to learn to stay away from certain topics lest he wanted an argument.
One of those was Sao, its 'inheritors' or virtual reality in general. His father wasn't completely oblivious when it came to newer technologies, his wife worked for an IT magazine to begin with and he also had a lot of dealings with IT companies but he drew the line at FULLDIVE and everything that came after it.
To him, ALO, GGO, and all other games have been nothing but disasters waiting to happen. He especially refused to even mention SAO claiming to have heard enough about the game that made Kazuto waste away for two years and caused his whole family a bunch of anxiousness.
That was one point he would have argued against. Even if it was hard at times, even if he lost so much, he also found so many things in that world. To him, those two years were not a waste but a precious memory that made him who he was. But wanting to keep their relationship cordial and not wanting to argue fruitlessly, he gave in and decided it was easier to keep it to himself.
Just shut up, keep your head low, and act normal, just like society demands you to. He had to tell himself enough times that it became a sort of mantra.
"Let's just get going." He said a bit gruffly, his good mood suddenly gone as he shouldered his pack and moved in the direction of the gate.
Neither of them talked much as they checked in, boarded the plane, and got ready to leave America. Even as the notion of finally going back to Japan, going home, that was a terse silence between them, which neither adopted son nor father was willing to try and break.
Maybe it was better this way. Forcing the issue would just make it worse, and if it was anything the two of them silently agreed on, it was to keep their personal hang-ups hidden from the rest of the family.
"Just wake me up after we landed." Minetaka joked with a slightly sweaty face as he started fiddling around with his belt. His eyes already seemed to scan for an approaching hostess, no doubt trying to use alcohol to work through his nerves.
"Yeah, sure," Kazuto replied in a slightly disinterested tone, as he pulled out his phone to switch it to airplane mode. As he did, his eyes briefly stopped at his reflection on the screen.
The boy who looked back at him was as much of a stranger as it was familiar. His face, no longer so thin and pale following his two years of lying around, was still rather girly and androgynous, which led to a couple of uncomfortable situations. American men had no shame with their horrible pickup lines.
His hair grew out a little, not to the extent of his GGO avatar but still reaching his chin and framing it from all sides. Normally he had it pulled back into a low ponytail, usually when he studied, to stop it from getting in the way. Today was an exception, where he decided to leave it free, almost forgetting how it made him look even more like a bishounen.
What really caught his attention, though, were his eyes. They were the sane black, almost gray color they always were, yet to him the differences were more than obvious.
There were dark bags surrounding it, remnants of the all-nighters he decided to put in before his exams but more importantly, there was a certain spark missing. A spark that was with him for so long, pulled him through so much, simply disappeared as time went on.
Where did the hero of Aincrad go? The one who challenged the World Tree of Yggdrasil? The one who defeated the Pontifex of the Underworld?
He certainly didn't feel like that man on most days. His days of fighting were over, his swords were exchanged into a keyboard and a mouse.
"If only they saw me now." He muttered with a sarcastic smile, even as he felt his eyes drop as exhaustion caught up with him. "How far the infamous beater had fallen…"
Part of him wanted this normal life he carved out for himself. Without constantly fighting for his life, he overcame his demons and finally found something that he was passionate about doing and following through. He should have been happy for it, for finally taking off the coat and burden of Kirito. He was happy.
Yet there was always a tiny part of him that yearned to go back. To fight with his life on the line, for a fight that meant more than victory or defeat. To go back to where he felt his strongest, where he felt he belonged.
Unknown to him, this unvoiced wish of his might come true sooner than he thought.
-0-
The soft, almost majestic song of a piano greeted Kazuto as his consciousness slowly, almost reluctantly surfaced from his dreams.
It reminded him of the constant BGM of Sao. So quiet that it wasn't enough to wake you up or be a bother, but still constantly present just at the edge of your hearing. It was strange for sure, during the start of the beta test but it became almost second nature, something expected and ordinary by the time the death game was in full swing. He never did bother to mess with its setting and simply lived with it.
After getting out, it was the silence that bothered him for a long time. Silence meant danger or even death and the part of him that expected all of this to be a dream felt wary. It got to the point he couldn't even fall asleep without any kind of music in the background.
The next observation he made was that he was comfortable. Way more comfortable than he should have been on an airplane seat, despite what the brochures might have stated.
He was also lying down, instead of sitting, yet this fact for some reason didn't frighten him. It was a sofa, not a bed, further investigation told him, despite not opening his eyes just yet. His head was definitely leaning on the armrest and his feet were dangling in the air and his right hand touched the ground just barely.
The sofa was incredibly soft, unlike many he ever laid on, so much so that even the slightly awkward angle he rested in wasn't enough to fully pull him out of his semi-lucid state just yet. A part of him should have been worried to the extent this mysterious place made him lower his guard but he frankly couldn't care less.
The one thing that finally forced him to fully wake up was the newest sound he discovered. It was a quiet, rhythmic knocking, the sound of someone tapping their fingers on hardwood. At first, he thought it was part of the strange music as ít followed its rhythm but it had that almost human quality, that split-second delay that told him that sound wasn't artificial.
Opening his eyes, the sight that greeted hun was an open, almost endless sky. Small clouds lazily were gliding through the air, guided by the gentle wind. It felt like it was closer to the night, the sun no longer visible yet its last rays still illuminating the horizon. Strangely the first comparison that popped into his head was of the artificial sky hanging above almost every floor of the gigantic castle of Aincrad.
There was but one thing off with the picture.
In a word, it was too blue. It was as if someone took a picture of the sky and put it through a filter that dimmed all colors save for blue.
The sky itself was a dark, almost foreboding blue, the clouds instead of white appeared a step away from indigo. Even the sun's rays bathed the place in a softer blue color, rather than yellow, orange, or even red.
It was surreal, not something you could ever see in reality. Or at least not in the 'real world' a part of him treacherously whispered.
His curiosity finally overcame his sleepiness and he pulled himself up, grabbing the edge of the sofa for leverage. It was a bit of a harder task than he would have liked, as a new wave of dizziness assaulted him, the world spinning as he tried to keep himself upright.
The first thing his eyes caught when he finally could look straight was the ground under his feet. Or at least where the ground under his feet was supposed to be.
For a moment fear assaulted him, as he was greeted with the sight of velvet-colored clouds rolling almost peacefully beneath him, with no land or mass of any kind visible. It took a moment for the rest of his senses to catch up to him, to realize he was not falling and his feet were actually standing on something solid, even if he could not see it.
"What's going on?" The perplexed question slipped out before his still-dazzled brain could intercept it. To his continued surprise, his voice echoed around him, in a strange, distorted manner, as if the sound repeatedly bounced off something. Just like in the rare underwater floors he encountered in his, admittedly, brief stint of exploring the various wonders of ALO.
Steeling himself, Kazuto stood up, his movements stiff and uncertain as his body instinctively tried to prepare for the freefall it believed would come after this. His mind might know it otherwise but all of his senses were telling him there was nothing to stand on, so it came to the inevitable conclusion that he would plummet to his death.
He didn't, in fact, fall to his death, much to his relief. He did almost face-plant though, thanks to his shaking legs before catching himself.
"So glad that worked. That would have been a terrible way to die." He wryly joked to hide his nervousness, slowly straightening up.
Then he caught something in the corner of his eyes and whatever witty remark he had on its tongue, it died a quick death.
Because floating in the distance, without any apparent care, was a very familiar castle.
One hundred floors, stacked up upon each other, each slightly smaller than the one below it, creating a sort of cone shape, with the majestic ruby castle standing on the top, like a twisted Christmas decoration. No one was quite sure how it came to be, though its scant lore alluded to the fact that its floors were ripped out of the vast land hundreds if not thousands of years above, some kind of magic putting them on each other and connecting them through its mysterious labyrinths. Yet, its purpose eluded those trapped within it.
In truth, it was the digitized copy made by a madman, who trapped thousands of people in it, killing more than a third of them, all in a misguided dream of reaching the real thing through it. To this day, he couldn't say if he despised that place and its creator or not.
It is where Kirito, the infamous beater was born. Where he found love and forged friendships and bitter rivalries alike. An Incarnating Radius. Better known as Aincrad.
Kazuto felt his mouth dry the more he looked at the familiar sight. Paradoxically, he spent more time on the inside than gazing at its outside, even as it was imported into Alfheim Online but at the same time, the more differences stood out to him.
Most of its outer walls on the right side were missing, exposing the various floors to the outside, save for some smaller chunks. Many floors seemed to be missing entirely, especially on the lower end, while others seemed withered and dead even from afar. It seemed to be on the edge of falling apart and rejoining the group below.
Or, seen from a different perspective, it looked as if it was merely in the process of being built.
Just when he thought he had reached the end of surprises waiting for this impossible place, he got another shock as an amused chuckle rang out.
"Beautiful isn't it?"
The voice was definitely male, hauntingly familiar yet at the same time, there was something otherworldly in it, an echo of sorts that distorted it enough that he couldn't tell who it belonged to. There was one thing that Kazuto could tell though. It came from right behind him.
He slowly, almost robotically turned around, his body tensing as wariness took the place of the previous confusion. The fact that he was not alone, that he didn't notice until they made themselves known was a little alarming but at the same time, it meant he had someone to get answers from.
Kazuto told himself that he was ready for anything. Foolishly believed that nothing could surprise him anymore. From monsters of all kinds to deranged, power-hungry fairy kings, from disturbed killers to out-of-control AIs vying for immortality.
From Aincrad to the Underworld, he saw and experienced all, yet all that experience counted as nothing as his eyes widened to the size of dinner plates and his mouth hung open at the sight of the figure in front of him.
"It's been a while since our last meeting, hasn't it? Welcome to the Velvet Room." His host greeted him wearing an enigmatic smile as their eyes met.
In front of him was a long table, mahogany, his brain supplied, one of the only things in this strange place that wasn't some shade of blue. On one side it had an old-school reading lamp as well as a stack of papers almost haphazardly placed around. Next to them was an open, depowered laptop, its monitor facing him. Following the theme, he recognized it as an older, almost decade-old model.
Yet all of it paled in importance compared to the person sitting behind it.
The soft, velvet-colored suit, with its sharp and expensive appearance, was new, after all, he was accustomed to seeing that man in a lab coat, as well as the pair of reading glasses resting on its nose but the rest were an image that he could never forget nor mistake.
Pale skin, evidence of countless hours spent inside, in front of a monitor, thin, almost gaunt features. Slightly sunken gray eyes that shone with unrivaled intelligence and a small if deserved arrogance. Short brown hair that looked so disheveled as if it had gone through a natural disaster. But the most familiar was the small, wistful smile on the thirty-something-year-old man's face.
A smile he himself wore at one point. Especially when he first logged into the beta of Sword Art Online. The game whose creator sat in front of him patiently waiting for his reaction.
"Kayaba Akihiko?!"
Genius, madman, innovator, murderer. These and even more words are used to describe the man who kidnapped ten thousand people and killed almost half of them. But most importantly, the man died with his own game, when it was cleared, though Kazuto did encounter the man's digital copy or spirit a couple of times in virtual reality.
"What's going on? What is this place?" the questions burst out of him, even as the scientist remained enigmatically silent. His mind was already whirling furiously, trying to analyze the new information.
His eyes' focus constantly shifted to the side rapidly, trying to spot any kind of interface or even anything amiss that would tell him that he was in a virtual reality. While he did not remember logging into any game or even putting on his amusphere, it wasn't the first time he ended up in a VR world without his prior knowledge.
Instead of answering, the ghost of a madman continued to smile mysteriously, his eyes straying over the floating castle that barely seemed to hang together. He had a fond look in his eyes as if meeting an old friend.
Just when Kazuto opened his mouth to snap him out of it, the older man turned back to him. Yet his words continued to not make any sense.
"This is the Velvet Room, just like I told you, Kirito-kun." Kayaba patiently explained, his expression saying that he was clearly humoring the young man, instead of taking him seriously."This place exists between dream and reality, mind and matter. A place that no ordinary man could visit, only those who signed and accepted their contract as a guest."
"That doesn't make any sense." The young man snapped back, his patience quickly wearing thin as the wonder of this whole place faded, yet the questions only seemed to grow more and more numerous.
He made to walk up to the man, in a vain hope that he could force him to give a straight answer. A part of him knew it was a futile attempt, the Kayaba he knew wasn't someone to be intimidated or moved by others' pace.
Whether he could have been successful or not was never answered as he never did reach the man himself.
After a few steps, a new set of dizziness took over him. Kazuto suddenly stumbled on his feet, his vision darkening. He felt weak and exhausted, yet his body felt light at the same time. So light that he wasn't even aware he stopped moving altogether.
His vision swam but he still could make out the silhouette of Kayaba, patiently sitting behind his desk. From the lack of movements or questions from him, he was not surprised at all. Rather, he seemed to have expected it.
"Can't be helped I guess. You have yet to accept your contract first, so logic dictates that you cannot remain in the Velvet Room." Kayaba commented while letting out a single, slightly aggravated sigh. It felt like he was being inconvenienced by this whole turn of events, rather than expressing any kind of worry.
Kazuto opened his mouth, though he was not sure what he wanted to say, but a new wave of vertigo hit him, bringing him down to his knees. His mind itself was getting fuzzy, making it harder and harder for him to concentrate.
Despite that, as Kayaba continued talking, seemingly more to himself than anything, he heard him clear as day.
"There is a storm coming, Kirito-kun. A storm no one will see coming, from a direction no one will expect. The world will need a hero to rise up, but I wonder, will you once again pick up your discarded mantle? You might think that your feud with that world is over, that you found peace and embraced it. But at your core, you remain who you always were. A warrior."
"You sure…love your…monologues." Kazuto grounded out as a last act of defiance. The role of a villain suited Kayaba after all, to a scary degree.
Even so, he was already half out of it with his vision completely gone dark. That man's voice was nothing more than a fading echo.
"I await your decision in the coming days. Will you close your eyes and enjoy the endless paradise or discard those shackles and face reality head-on? I eagerly anticipate the results."
At that point, his consciousness was all but gone. Yet for a single moment, he felt something incredibly soft cradling his face and he smelled a very familiar scent. It was the soft, earthly scent of a forest mixed with a sweet and wistful one.
He wanted to cry. It was something he didn't know he missed, like an old friend returning to his side.
"Remember Kirito. You will never be alone." said a different, albeit more welcome voice in his ear. And then he knew no more.
-0-
By the time their plane touched down and his father shook him awake, Kazuto barely remembered the strange dream. At most, only the sense of something amiss and confusion remained, with those strange, last words running in his head, like a forgotten memory. Never complete, never making perfect sense.
"Next time, remind me not to fall asleep on a plane," he grumbled to his father as he massaged his aching neck. The two of them were already out of their seats, their luggage firmly secured to their side and waiting to get off.
"And now you know why I carry travel pillows with me whenever I leave." His father commented, just a tad smug as he affectionately patted said pillow.
"Yeah, yeah. Lesson learned."
It was a miracle that he managed to keep the sarcasm out of his voice but he wanted to avoid starting an argument. They were coming home.
At last, the endless line of human bodies started moving, sweeping along the two names, and eventually spitting them out just when they reached their exit.
"Freedom!" Both male members of the Kirigaya household let out joyous shouts as they got out of the plane. Only to almost fall down the stairs leading out of said aircraft.
With that bit of commotion down, they shared a rueful chuckle as they properly stepped foot on Japanese soil and took a large gulp of air in relief.
While he did not regret his decision to leave, Kazuto could admit that he did miss home. And the simple fact that after a year he was back in Japan, filled him with a surprising amount of happiness.
"I'm back." he found himself murmuring under his breath, a slight smile on his face.
"We should be going. Don't want to keep the others waiting." his father commented in a fond tone, apparently very familiar with how he was feeling, a strange sense of camaraderie connecting them.
"Yeah," he replied breathlessly, his mind a bit away. It was good to be back.
Too bad he had no idea the long road ahead of him, the obstacles he would face, the testing of his bonds, and the destiny waiting for him. If he did, he might have jumped straight back into the plane he arrived at, even if it was too late already.
The cogs of fate started moving and with it, a brand new adventure for the Black Swordsman.