Kikuoka raised his head and lowered his voice so the people around them would not overhear.
"Shouichi Shinkawa was the eldest son of a general hospital director. He had poor health throughout childhood, and that left him with almost no confidence."
He paused briefly, choosing his words.
"He spent most of his school years going in and out of hospitals. In the end, he entered high school a year late. Because of that, his father gave up on making him the family successor."
Shino's fingers tightened faintly around her cup.
"That responsibility was pushed onto Kyoji instead," Kikuoka continued. "His younger brother, three years below him."
He looked down at the tablet.
"Kyoji had private tutors from elementary school onward. His father personally oversaw his studies, while paying almost no attention to Shouichi. The older brother was cornered because no one expected anything from him. The younger brother was cornered because too much was expected of him."
Kikuoka's expression grew faintly bitter.
"Those were their father's own words."
He paused there and took a sip of coffee.
Shino stared down at the table, trying to imagine what it meant to carry a family's expectations.
She could not.
The feeling was too foreign to her.
She had been so close to Kyoji, yet she had never noticed the pressure he lived under. She had been too busy shutting everyone else out.
The realization hurt.
"Despite all that," Kikuoka continued, "the brothers apparently got along fairly well."
He set his cup down.
"After Shouichi dropped out of high school, he sought comfort in virtual worlds. According to his statement, that was when he met you, Suzuki-kun."
"That's right."
Satoru let out a quiet breath.
"His interest in MMORPGs soon rubbed off on Kyoji. Not long after that, Shouichi was trapped inside Sword Art Online and spent two years unconscious in his father's hospital."
Kikuoka's eyes moved behind his glasses.
"After Shouichi survived and returned, Kyoji began to idolize him. You could even say he saw his brother as a hero."
Beside Shino, something heavy entered Satoru's breathing.
Kikuoka kept his voice low.
"For a while after Shouichi woke up, he refused to speak about anything that had happened in SAO. But once his rehabilitation was over and he returned home, he told Kyoji that he had killed many players there."
He tapped one finger lightly against the edge of the tablet.
"It was probably meant as a confession. But by then, Kyoji was already under enormous pressure from his poor grades and from older students bullying him. Instead of being horrified, he found the story liberating."
Kikuoka's mouth tightened.
"Maybe even exhilarating."
"Um..."
Kikuoka looked up and nodded for Shino to continue.
"Did you hear all of this from Shinkawa... from Kyoji?"
"No."
Kikuoka shook his head.
"It all came from his brother. Shouichi answered every question the police asked. More importantly, he turned himself in. By the time we arrested Kyoji, Shouichi was already sitting in an interrogation room, telling them everything."
He hesitated for a moment.
"His account of Kyoji's feelings is only his own interpretation, of course. Kyoji himself has refused to say a word."
"I see..."
Where was Kyoji's mind now?
Shino could not even imagine it.
Perhaps that was why she felt that if she logged into GGO right now, she would go straight to the tavern where they had promised to meet and see whether Spiegel was still waiting there.
"Please... go on."
Kikuoka nodded and looked back at the tablet.
"After leaving SAO, Shouichi remained withdrawn. Then one day, Kyoji told him about GGO."
He scrolled down.
"Shouichi had shown almost no interest in anything until then, but suddenly he decided to join. And when he learned that GGO had an item with optical camouflage, a terrible idea took root."
"RMT..." Shino whispered.
Real-money trading.
Death Gun's cloak had possessed a metamaterial optical camouflage effect. It was probably an exceptionally rare boss drop. Shino could easily imagine it costing more than her Hecate II.
"That cloak must have been expensive..."
Kikuoka nodded, looking almost as though he still could not believe the figure himself.
"More than three hundred thousand yen."
"..."
"Shouichi apparently received five hundred thousand yen a month from his father for living expenses."
"Then that huge rifle was bought with real money too?"
Kikuoka nodded again.
Satoru, who had been quiet until then, spoke in a low voice.
"What did he hear?"
Kikuoka looked at him.
"What did Shouichi hear that made him want to join GGO?"
Something flickered behind Kikuoka's glasses.
For two seconds, he said nothing.
Then he answered.
"Kyoji told him about a high-level player named Samuro. That was what pushed him to do it."
Satoru closed his eyes.
Kikuoka's expression turned grave.
"Once he entered GGO, Shouichi used the camouflage cloak and the Bullet of Bullets tournament as the foundation for his plan. He threw himself into improving both his avatar and his own skills."
He glanced at the tablet again.
"According to his statement, he sometimes stayed logged in for three or four days at a time."
The light of the setting sun stretched across the table as Kikuoka continued.
"When he decided the time was right, Shouichi memorized personal information displayed during tournament registration at the Presidential Estate. After logging out, he wrote it all down."
His gaze moved to Shino.
"In the end, he obtained the real names and addresses of sixteen players. Yours was among them, Asada-san."
"..."
Shino nodded.
Before the second BoB tournament in early September, at least five hundred players must have gone through registration. Roughly half would have selected model guns and entered their real names and addresses.
Stealing sixteen sets of personal information would not have been impossible.
"Then, one day in October, Kyoji told Shouichi that his build had hit a dead end because of false information spread by a player named XeXeeD."
Kikuoka's voice remained calm.
"He hated him for it. So Shouichi gave Kyoji the real name and address he had obtained for XeXeeD."
That must have been the moment the wall between reality and the virtual world began to dissolve inside Kyoji.
"According to Shouichi, neither of them proposed it outright at first," Kikuoka said. "They only began discussing how they could punish XeXeeD using the personal information they had."
He paused.
"And little by little, the Death Gun plan took shape."
Shino felt her throat tighten.
"Shoot someone inside the game," Kikuoka said, "while killing the player in reality."
He lowered his eyes.
"It sounds simple. Carrying it out was anything but. Over several days, they worked through each practical problem one by one."
"The biggest obstacles," Satoru said, "were getting a key, the injector, and the drug."
Kikuoka looked at him.
Satoru's expression did not change.
"Large hospitals keep emergency override keys for certain electronic locks. For patients' homes, right? They stole one from their father's hospital."
Kikuoka parted his lips as though letting out a silent whistle.
"As sharp as ever."
He leaned back slightly.
"As keyless electronic locks become more widespread, the government will need to strengthen safeguards for private residences. That information is classified, by the way."
"Then don't say it in a cafe."
"Fair point."
Kikuoka smiled thinly, then returned to the subject.
"In any case, the brothers stole the emergency key, a needle-free high-pressure injector, and succinylcholine from their father's hospital. With that, they had everything they needed."
His expression darkened.
"Shouichi said the whole process felt like a game."
Shino's stomach tightened.
"In SAO, he had gathered information on a target group, prepared the necessary equipment, then launched the attack. To him, this was no different."
"Idiotic..." Satoru muttered.
Kikuoka raised an eyebrow.
"Was it?"
"They let the boundary between reality and the virtual world blur."
"And you?"
Kikuoka's gaze sharpened.
"What do you consider reality?"
Satoru looked toward a point on the ceiling, his expression serious.
"Everything in that world truly existed."
"Have you ever wished none of it had happened?"
"No."
His answer came without hesitation.
"Never."
Kikuoka considered that answer, then turned to Shino.
"What about you, Asada-san?"
"Huh...?"
Pulled into the conversation without warning, Shino struggled to find the words.
She was not used to putting feelings like these into sentences.
Still, she tried.
"I don't think there is such a thing as a virtual world."
The two men looked at her.
"Wherever people are, that's reality, isn't it? There may be many VRMMOs, but those worlds don't really separate the people inside them."
Her voice trembled slightly, but she kept going.
"The world I'm in right now..."
She reached out and lightly touched Satoru's left wrist with one fingertip.
"This is the only reality."
Satoru looked at her.
"Even if this place were actually another virtual world created by an AmuSphere, it would still be real to me."
She lowered her hand.
"That's what I believe."
Their eyes met, and heat rose to Shino's face.
"I see..."
Satoru's voice softened.
"Yeah."
"What Shino just said may be the only worthwhile thing to come out of this entire incident."
"Don't make fun of me."
She made a fist and lightly punched his shoulder.
Kikuoka watched her for a moment, then looked down at the empty cake plate.
"No, I mean it. You're right."
His tone was quieter now.
"But Shouichi may have been the exact opposite. He treated the place he couldn't see as the only reality."
"He never truly returned from Aincrad," Satoru said.
He looked down at the table.
"Maybe Kayaba's dream of creating another world won't truly be fulfilled until that castle finally collapses."
"Don't say anything that unsettling."
Kikuoka's face tightened.
"There are still too many unanswered questions surrounding Kayaba's death, but he had nothing to do with this case."
He took a breath.
"Back to Shouichi."
Kikuoka tapped the tablet again.
"Once the preparations were complete, they moved on to entering the targets' homes and administering the drug. Shouichi faced almost no psychological resistance."
He read from the screen.
"He personally killed the first victim, Shigemura Tamotsu, whose avatar was XeXeeD."
Shino's fingers stiffened around her cup.
"At around eleven o'clock on the night of November ninth, Shouichi used the emergency key to enter Shigemura's apartment. At eleven thirty, while Shigemura was appearing on MMO Stream through his AmuSphere, Shouichi pressed the needle-free injector beneath his jaw and administered succinylcholine."
Kikuoka's voice stayed even, but the content made the air around them feel colder.
"The muscle relaxant stopped his breathing and heartbeat. At that exact moment, Kyoji shot XeXeeD inside GGO."
He lifted his eyes.
"That is the sequence of events as we understand it."
Shino's shoulders flinched at Kyoji's name.
She remembered him straddling her two nights earlier, pouring out his hatred of XeXeeD.
Kyoji had blamed XeXeeD's false information for ruining his stat build and keeping him from becoming the strongest. Yet powerful extreme-AGI players like Dark Wind and Samuro existed. Kyoji had simply rejected that fact.
Perhaps he could no longer endure the older students who insulted him, threatened him, and took his money in the real world.
No.
That wasn't it.
To Kyoji, the real world had already...
"Shouichi also carried out the second murder," Kikuoka continued, "this time targeting a player named Usujio Tarako. The method was almost identical."
He moved to the next page.
"From the information they had stolen, the brothers selected seven targets who met specific conditions. They lived alone within the Tokyo metropolitan area, and their homes either used one of the few remaining older electronic locks or had a spare key hidden nearby."
"That must have taken a lot of work to investigate," Satoru said.
Kikuoka frowned in agreement.
"A tremendous amount of time and effort, I imagine."
He folded his hands on the table.
"Yet even after two players died, almost no one believed the stories about Death Gun."
"Of course not," Shino said. "Everyone thought it was just a rumor. So did I."
"Exactly."
Kikuoka's expression grew heavier.
"If we had recognized the connection even one day earlier, we might have prevented the two additional deaths during this tournament."
He turned his eyes toward Satoru.
"Suzuki-kun and I both bear responsibility for that."
Satoru raised an eyebrow.
"What does this have to do with me?"
"My mistake was failing to intensify the GGO investigation after learning that two players had already died. I even abandoned the idea of asking for your help."
Kikuoka's tone sharpened.
"But you had already realized something, hadn't you, Suzuki-kun? You suspected Death Gun was an SAO survivor. Even then, you chose to enter his arena instead of contacting the police."
For the first time that evening, Kikuoka sounded truly serious.
Under Shino's worried gaze, Satoru gave him a humorless smile.
"All I had was a hunch. You had two confirmed deaths."
His eyes narrowed.
"What I'd like to know is why you decided not to ask for my help."
"That was a personal decision."
Kikuoka smiled faintly.
"You told me long ago not to come looking for you again."
The two men stared at each other across the table.
The air between them tightened.
Shino gathered her courage.
"But Suzuki-kun did save me."
"No."
Satoru shook his head.
"I didn't do anything. You saved yourself. This time, I couldn't save anyone."
Shino studied him.
She still had not properly thanked him. Before she could say anything, Kikuoka cut in.
"Asada-san is right."
His voice returned to its usual calm.
"By the time we understood what was happening, it was reasonable to assume all seven targets would die. You prevented that, Suzuki-kun. You did your part."
Kikuoka looked at him carefully.
"There's no reason to blame yourself."
"You've misunderstood."
Satoru's voice was flat.
"I'm blaming myself for the Shinkawa brothers. The ones who started all of this. Not for players I'd never even met."
"How cold."
Kikuoka's eyes narrowed behind his glasses.
"Still, this incident will harm the young worlds growing from The Seed. Countless seedlings are taking root and gathering together. One day, they may grow into something like the World Tree."
He paused.
"As the man who scattered those seeds, you're being awfully detached."
"Enough."
Satoru said it quietly.
Kikuoka held his gaze for a moment, then looked away first.
"Very well. You already know most of what happened next anyway."
He returned to the tablet.
"Shouichi and Kyoji were furious that the Death Gun legend had failed to spread. So they moved on to their BoB plan."
Kikuoka's eyes shifted to Shino.
"During the third Bullet of Bullets tournament, they planned to shoot three players in a single event."
He named them one by one.
"Pale Rider."
"Garrett."
"And Sinon."
His voice softened slightly.
"You, Asada-san."
"..."