Sinon opened her mouth as if to say something, then realized she had no idea what should come out.
She did not even know what she was feeling right now. A wave of heat rose in her chest, and she suddenly hugged Hecate II tight against herself.
Facing her, Satoru gave one of his rare smiles.
"...It's over, isn't it?"
He said it simply, then looked up at the sky. Following his movement, Sinon looked up as well.
At some point, the enormous clouds had split apart. The stars filling the sky shone as if competing with one another. Thinking back, this was the first time she had ever seen stars in this world.
Because GGO's sky had been affected by the final war of the past, it was often covered in thick clouds. The gloomy dusk-yellow of daytime never fully faded, so even at night, the sky usually retained a deep blood-red cast.
But she had once heard an old NPC in town say that someday, when the poison gas on the ground was purified and the white sands returned, the clouds would clear too. The night sky would go back to shining with stars and starships together.
Of course, those were only fixed NPC lines.
Even so, maybe this desert was not just a wasteland where players wandered, but a promised land waiting in the distant future.
For a while, Sinon forgot to speak. She only stared at the clear night sky, at the many colors of light spread across it, and at the glow of spacecraft wreckage flowing between them like a river.
At last, Satoru spoke.
"The tournament should be ending soon. Otherwise the audience is going to get angry. After watching that man and me act out our own private fight, they're probably completely lost right now."
"...Yeah. I guess so."
A gun-and-sword duel like that might truly have been the first of its kind. Maybe some fanatics would even establish a gun-and-sword style after this, though Sinon doubted any normal player could actually pull it off.
The pale-blue broadcast cameras floating across the night sky looked strangely impatient, their REC icons blinking over and over.
Satoru had probably noticed that too.
"Now that Death Gun has been defeated, the accomplice targeting you should have backed off too. His goal was to create the legend that players shot by a black gun inside GGO would be killed in the real world too, so he wouldn't kill at random. Logging out now shouldn't be dangerous. Still, just in case, you should contact the police as soon as you can."
"But even if I call, what am I supposed to say? That someone was coordinating murders inside a VRMMO with an accomplice in the real world? The police aren't going to believe that right away, are they?"
"Fair point. But I know a government official who handles this kind of thing. I can contact him. The problem is, I would have to ask for your real name and address here."
Asking for someone's real-life information inside a VRMMO was a serious breach of etiquette.
He knew that very well.
But after thinking for a moment, Sinon nodded.
"All right. I'll tell you."
"But..."
"After everything that happened, what are you still hesitating for? I... This is the first time I've ever told someone about that incident myself."
Satoru made a low sound of understanding and nodded.
If she hesitated any longer, her own shyness might make her turn away and say never mind after all. So Sinon slung Hecate II over her shoulder, stepped forward, leaned close to Satoru's ear, and spoke in a voice no one else could hear.
"My name is... Shino Asada. My address is Yushima 4-chome, Bunkyo Ward, Tokyo..."
Satoru thought for a moment.
"I've got it. As soon as I log out, I'll contact that official. And just in case, I'll head over there myself right away. By car, it shouldn't take long."
If there was one thing he trusted himself to do, it was drive fast.
"Ugh... you..."
Are you coming?
She nearly said it, but held herself back and cleared her throat softly.
"No, it's fine. I have a friend I trust who lives nearby..."
Spiegel—Kyoji Shinkawa, the player who had introduced her to GGO—lived nearby. His father ran a clinic in Hongo, close enough that Kyoji could come if she called, he would come. He had probably been watching the tournament broadcast from beginning to end too, so she would have to explain why she had been interacting with Satoru so much.
"...And he's a doctor's son. If anything happens, he'll help me."
She added that part to hide her embarrassment.
Satoru's brow tightened at once, as if something had occurred to him.
"A doctor's son?"
His eyes flickered for a moment.
"I'll go to your place as soon as I log out. I can call that official on the way."
Once again, he failed to care about the danger of making a phone call while driving. He was strangely confident only when it came to driving.
"O-oh. I see. That's fine, then."
She had not expected her words to make him even more forceful. But hearing the growing concern in his voice made her cheeks warm, and she muttered the words while casually looking away.
"That settles it, then. By the way... a-am I the only one who has to reveal personal information?"
"Hm? Ah. Right... My name is Satoru Suzuki, and I live in Tokyo."
Unlike her, Satoru gave his real-world information without much hesitation.
Sinon tasted the name in her mind and, despite the tense situation, found herself smiling faintly.
"Satoru Suzuki, huh? That has nothing to do with a name like Samuro at all, does it?"
"You are not the first person to complain about my naming sense."
Satoru smiled with a trace of nostalgia, then looked up at the camera overhead again.
"To log out, we have to settle the match. Sinon, shoot me. My HP bar is basically empty, and I don't have any of the medkits they handed out earlier."
Only then did the girl remember that she had wanted to fight this person again.
Until a moment ago, she had completely forgotten that wish.
She looked at the scarred face in front of her and thought for a while.
"A person's strength isn't about the result... It's about the path they took to reach it."
"What was that?"
"N-nothing. I mean, look at you. You're covered in wounds. If I beat someone like that with one shot, I wouldn't feel happy about it at all. Let's settle this at the next BoB main tournament."
Satoru gave a bitter smile.
"I was never interested in that sort of thing in the first place. I only joined this time because of Death Gun."
Thanks to this whole mess, he had lost most of his interest in the game as well.
"I don't care. Either way, you have to find some motivation next time."
Sinon paused, then glanced up at the blinking cameras.
"Now, it's time to end the third tournament."
"How? This is a battle royale. Unless someone's HP reaches zero, there won't be a winner, right?"
"It's rare, but in the first BoB tournament on the North American server, two players won at the same time. The player who should have won got careless and was blown up by a pretty embarrassing trick: a parting-gift grenade."
"A parting-gift grenade?"
"A grenade dropped by someone who's already been taken down, right before they die, to drag one more person with them. Here."
Sinon took a black sphere from her pocket and tossed it.
Satoru instinctively caught it with his right hand.
The small timer on top had already spun close to the five-second mark.
It was the plasma grenade Sinon had hurriedly recovered beside Dark Wind, who had been eliminated on the western side of the rocky hill, after confirming that Satoru had defeated Death Gun. From that moment, she had already decided how this match would end.
Finally realizing what he was holding, Satoru's eyes widened, and he instinctively tried to throw it away.
To stop him, Sinon wrapped her arms around him from behind and pinned him in place.
"In your words, this is basic procedure."
Hearing that teasing laugh, Satoru could not help the corner of his mouth from twitching.
"If a grenade can solve it, there's no need to bother aiming and shooting... Yeah. That's basic procedure, all right."
A dazzling light burst between them.
Satoru's sigh and Sinon's smile both dissolved into a pure white screen.
Match time: two hours, four minutes, thirty-seven seconds.
The Battle Royale match of the third Bullet of Bullets main tournament had ended.
Result: Sinon and Samuro were declared joint winners.
...
After being transferred out of the isolated island battlefield of the BoB main tournament and back into the standby area, Sinon looked at the results screen floating in front of her and waited for the logout countdown to finish, doing her best to calm her thoughts.
The tournament was over, but the Death Gun incident was not.
In the real world, Death Gun's accomplices were probably still somewhere near Shino. Satoru had said he would contact the police and hurry over, but he would be logging out at the same time as her.
Until he arrived, she would have to protect herself.
First, she needed to confirm that her home was safe. Then she would contact Kyoji Shinkawa and ask him to come over. He might run into an accomplice, so she had to warn him to be careful too.
The numbers on the large-font countdown timer dropped quickly. At last, only ten seconds remained.
One final time, she looked at the results screen.
At the top, her name and Satoru's shone as joint winners. Having one's name displayed there was the ultimate goal for every GGO player, but unfortunately, this result might not count. The conditions of the match had been far too abnormal. She would have to leave that goal for the fourth tournament.
There was no second place.
Third place showed Death Gun's login name: Sterben.
At first glance, someone might mistake it for Steven. But to the man in the ragged cloak, Death Gun was probably his true name. A login name meant nothing beyond disguise.
Fourth place was Dark Wind. As one of the favorites to win, plenty of people must have bet on him. This tournament's betting pool was going to be a huge upset.
Below fifth place were rows of well-known players. Her eyes passed over the names Dyne and One-Eyed Warlord before the list ended at twenty-eighth place.
At the very bottom, two disconnected players were listed: Pale Rider and Garrett.
So two people really had been killed by Death Gun during this tournament.
That meant there were two accomplices.
What kind of group had they formed inside a VRMMO, and what had they gone through, for the three of them to plan a crime this horrifying...?
The instant the countdown reached zero, what rose in her heart was not the rush of victory.
It was a cold shiver.