I nodded slowly while looking into Asuna's eyes.

Tears formed in her hazelnut eyes as Asuna silently pressed her lips against the hand she was holding. I could feel their soft movement.

"I'll also...bear it with you. Every burden that you have, I'll carry them with you. I promise. I'll definitely protect you from now on..."

This was- The line that I couldn't say even once up until now. Yet in this moment, my lips trembled, and I could hear the sounds unveiling themselves from my throat, from my very soul.

"Me too."

A very thin voice reverberated across the air.

"I'll protect you too."

Although these were simple words, I had said them in such a pathetically quiet and unreliable manner. I smiled bitterly as I held up Asuna's hand and said: "Asuna...you really are strong. You're far stronger than me..."

After hearing that, Asuna blinked several times and then smiled.

"No, I'm not. I usually hide behind other people in the real world. Even this game wasn't something that I bought."

She laughed as if she had just thought of something.

"It was something that my older brother bought, but he had to suddenly leave for business; so I got to play with it on the game's opening day. He was really disappointed about that. He must be really angry now that I've occupied it for two years."

I thought that Asuna was even unluckier to have come here in his stead, but I just nodded.

"...you'd better get back quickly and apologize."

"Yeah... I'll have to try harder..."

But Asuna trailed off weakly as she said this, casting her eyes downward as if she was afraid of something and then moving her entire body closer to me.

"Umm...Kirito-kun, I know this is contradicting what I just said...but can we leave the front lines for a bit?"

"Hmm...?"

"I'm scared somehow... We finally managed to convey our feelings, so I feel like something bad will happen again if we go to the front lines straight away... Maybe I'm just a little tired."

I brushed Asuna's hair back silently and nodded so meekly that I surprised even myself.

"Yeah, you're right... I'm, a bit tired too..."

Even if the numbers didn't change, the battles that we fought day after day acc.u.mulated plenty of fatigue that couldn't be seen. That's especially the case for situations as extreme as today's. Even a strong bow will break if one pulled on it excessively. We definitely needed a break.

I felt the impulse that drove me to fight relentlessly drift further away. Right now, I only wanted to deepen the bond between the two of us.

I wrapped my arms around Asuna, then buried my face in her silky hair and spoke: "On the northwestern part of the twenty-second floor, amongst the forests and lakes...there's a small village. It's a good place with no monsters. They sell a few cottages there. The two of us can move there together...and then... "

Asuna looked at me as I stopped talking.

"Then...?"

I managed to move my frozen tongue and kept talking.

"...let's, let's get married."

The perfect smile that Asuna showed me that moment, I would never forget it for the rest of my life.

"Okay..."

She nodded slightly as a large teardrop ran down her red cheeks.

Chapter 17.

There were four types of relationships that two players could have within the SAO system.

First was two people who didn't really know each other. The second was friends. People who had listed each other as friends could send short messages to each other no matter where they were. They could also search for each other's locations by map.

The third was guild comrades. Apart from the above benefits, they also gained a slight increase in their stats when they partied with members of the same guild. However, they had to give up a bit of the Col they earned as a sort of tax to the guild.

Up until now, Asuna and I were friends and members of the same guild, despite the fact that we were taking a break from the guild. But we had decided to enter the last type of relationship.

Marriage- although getting married was very simple. Once one person sent the proposal message and the other person accepted it, then they were married. But the difference between marriage and friends or guild members was incomparably different.

Marriage in SAO meant the sharing of all information and items. One could see the other's stat window at will, and even their inventory windows had fused into one. In others words, it was entrusting one's most important safety nets to their partners. In Aincrad, where betrayals and fraud were common, few went as far as marriage even amongst the closest couples. Of course, another important reason was because of the extremely unbalanced male-female ratio.

The twenty-second floor was one of the most spa.r.s.ely populated areas in Aincrad. Since it was one of the lower floors, it was especially large; but most of it was taken up by the forests and the numerous lakes that were scattered around the area; therefore, the living area was so small that it could be called a hamlet. Monsters seldom appeared on the field, and since the difficulty level of the labyrinth was exceptionally low, the level was cleared in three days and most players didn't remember much of it.

Asuna and I decided to buy a small, round cottage within the woods on the twenty-second floor to live in. Even though it was small, it still cost a considerable amount of money to buy a house within SAO. Asuna offered to sell her house in Salemburg, but I was strongly against it, because selling such a perfectly furnished house would be far too regrettable. So in the end, we gathered all of our rare items and sold them with the help of Agil, which managed to provide just enough money to buy the house.

Although Agil said with a sad expression that we could use the second floor of his shop if we wanted, I thought that spending a newly-wed life within a merchant shop was far too tragic. Furthermore, I didn't even want to imagine what would happen once the fact that the all-famous Asuna had gotten married became known. I thought that we should be able to spend our days peacefully on the spa.r.s.ely populated twenty-second floor.

"Uwa- what a beautiful view!"

Asuna leaned forward, out of the window in our bedroom; although it was called the bedroom, there were only two rooms in the entire house.

The scenery outside really was breathtaking. This was near the edge of Aincrad, so one could see the glittering lakes, the green forest, and the wide-open skies all at once. Because we usually lived with a stone ceiling about one hundred meters above us, the open skies gave us an inexplicable feeling of freedom.

"Just don't fall off while you're looking at the scenery."

I stopped organizing the household items and wrapped my arms around Asuna. This woman was now my wife- as I thought that, the warmth of bright sunlight in the winter, the marvelous feeling of wonder, as well as the surprise of how far we had gone all rushed me at once.

Until I became trapped in this game, I was just a kid who went to school and then back home without any goal in life. But now, the real world had become a faraway past.

If- if this game was cleared, we would be able to return to the real world...that was what all the players, including Asuna and I, wished for. But I couldn't help feeling anxious whenever I thought about it. I unconsciously began to apply strength to my arms that were around Asuna.

"It hurts, Kirito-kun... Is something wrong...?"

"S-Sorry... Hey, Asuna..."

For a moment I stopped talking, but I had to finish asking.

"...our relationship, is it only in-game...? Is it going to disappear once we return to the other world...?"

"I'm going to be angry, Kirito-kun."

Asuna turned around and looked at me with her eyes full of emotion.

"Even if this was just a normal game rather than this strange situation, I still wouldn't like another person so casually."

She squeezed my cheeks with both her hands, and then said: "I learned something here, and that was to keep trying and never give up. If we make it back to the real world, I'll definitely come find Kirito-kun again, and I'll still like you."

How many times have I marveled at Asuna's honest and strong heart? Or maybe mine was just too weak.

But even if I was the weak one, it was still all right. I had forgotten for such a long time how comfortable it was to depend on someone else and have them depend on me. I didn't know how long we would be able to stay here, but at least we were away from the battlefield during this period of time- I let my thoughts wander and concentrated my feelings on the softness and the sweet smell that filled my arms.

Chapter 18.

The float attached to the fishing line hadn't moved even once. Drowsiness invaded my consciousness as I watched the dancing sunlight reflected off the sparkling water ripples of the lake.

I made a huge yawn and pulled up the fishing line. Only an empty silver hook on the end shined in the light; the bait that I had put on it was gone.

Over ten days had pa.s.sed since we moved to the twenty-second floor. In order to gather food each day, I had erased my two-handed sword skill, which I trained briefly in a long time ago, and exchanged it for the fishing skill. I began to imitate Taikoubou [1] in fishing. But for some reason, I just couldn't catch anything. The training score had just pa.s.sed 600, so I didn't expect any big catches, but I thought that I should have at least caught something by now. Instead, I simply spent day after day wasting the cases of bait that I bought in the village.

"Gah, this is so annoying..."

I muttered my complaints, tossed the fishing tackle aside, and then threw myself onto the ground. The wind that rushed over the water was icy cold, but the overcoat that Asuna had made me with her sewing skills kept me warm. Asuna was still in the middle of training that skill, thus the coat wasn't as good as clothing from the NPC stores. But since it was useable and kept me warm, there weren't any problems.

It was now "The month of the Cypress" in Aincrad, which meant it was November back in j.a.pan. Although it was almost winter, fishing in SAO didn't have anything to do with seasons. Maybe it was simply because I had used up all my luck on getting my beautiful wife.

As my thoughts reached this, my entire being was filled with happiness, and a wide smile spread across my face. Then suddenly, a voice reached my ears.

"How did you do?"

I leapt up in surprise and saw a man standing there as I turned around.

He was wrapped in thick clothing, including a hat with ear flaps, and had fishing tackle in his hands just like me. But the surprising part was his age. No matter how I looked at it, he seemed at least fifty years old. The eyes behind metal framed gla.s.ses showed the age of a senior. Amongst the hardcore game addicts of SAO, it was extremely rare to see someone so old. Actually, I had never even seen one before. Maybe-?

"I'm not an NPC."

He smiled bitterly as if he had read my thoughts, and then slowly descended down the slope.

"S-Sorry. I was just wondering..."

"No, it's fine. It's understandable. I'm most probably the oldest player here."

His healthy body rocked as he gave a hearty "wa-ha-ha" laugh.

"Excuse me."

He said as he sat down next to me. He took out a bait case from his hip, then awkwardly opened a pop-up menu, retrieved his fishing rod, and put the bait on it.

"My name is Nishida. I'm a fisherman here. In j.a.pan, I worked as the head of maintenance for a company called the Tohto Broadband Connection. I'm sorry but I don't have my business cards with me."

He laughed again.

"Ah..."

I could mostly guess the reason for why he was in this game. Tohto was a network operator company that had been cooperating with Argus. They were responsible for taking care of the network that linked to the SAO servers.

"I'm Kirito. I moved here from the upper levels a while ago. Nishida oji-san...must have been...maintaining the SAO network connection...?"

"I was in charge of it."

Nishida said as he nodded. I looked at him with a complicated feeling. This meant that the man had become entangled in everything here because of his job.

"Haha, my superiors said there was no need to log on, but I can't be fully at ease until I see my work with my own eyes, and because of an old man's worries, I became like this."

He swung his rod with an amazingly smooth motion as he said this, and one could tell that he had the professional mastery of a skilled fisherman. He also seemed to like talking, as he kept on going without waiting for a response from me: "Other than me, there are around twenty to thirty other old men who ended up here due to various reasons. Most of them are living safely in Starting City, but I enjoy this far more than simply eating three meals a day."

He lifted his fishing rod a little.

"I searched endlessly for good rivers and lakes, and finally came up all the way to a place like this."

"Oh, really... Well, there are almost no monsters on this floor."

Nishida just smiled at what I said without answering. Then he asked me: "Well, are there any good spots on the upper floors?"

He asked.

"Hmmm... Well, the sixty-first floor was entirely a lake, well, more like a sea, and they say one could catch huge fish there."

"Ohh! I better go there sometime."