Her weakness of wanting a friend had clouded her eyes. There is no one who can save you but yourself. She have no choice but to get stronger through her own power, to overcome the wounds left by that incident. In order to do that, friends were not needed. Rather, enemies were fine. Enemies to fight - everything around her, enemies.

After a gulp, Shino took a deep breath, and looked straight into Endou's eyes.

A dangerous light dwelled in those two narrow eyes. This time the smile disappeared completely. Endou spoke in a low voice.

"What? Hurry up and go already."

"I don't want to."

"...Huh?"

"I don't want to. I have no intention of lending you any money."

Without averting her gaze, Shino replied.

Such a firm rejection would provoke even more hostility and malice. Despite knowing this, Shino would not follow their request. To follow their request was to run away and betray a weak resolve, something she didn't want to do. Not because it was Endou, but because she did not want to show herself "a weak self". To become strong, she spent the last five years thinking like this. If she yielded here, then those efforts would have been in vain.

"You b.i.t.c.h... don't you dare look down on me."

With her right eye twitching, Endou took a step forward. The other two girls quickly circled behind Shino, surrounding her from a close range.

"-I'm leaving now, so move aside." Shino said in a low voice. No matter how much they threatened her, Endou did not have the guts to take real action. These girls were just normal, good children when at home. They should have learned from before not to make it into a police issue.

But.

Endou was very familiar with Shino's weak point-the one spot Shino couldn't defend.

The fancy color on her lips shined as a mocking smile grew.

Endou slowly raised her right fist and pointed it toward the bridge of Shino's gla.s.ses. She extended her thumb and index finger from her fist, forming a child's imitation of a handgun. A silly, childish caricature.

However, with only that, Shino's whole body was enveloped by a chilling sensation.

She gradually lost strength in both of her legs. Her balance felt distant. In her eyes, the alley began to lose its color in contrast to Endou's finger before her. Shino could not take her eyes off the index finger's long nail with a glossy shine. Her heartbeat quickened, a high-frequency sound rang in her ears, increasing in pitch rapidly...

"Bang!"

Endou suddenly called out. Almost simultaneously, Shino let out a blood-curdling scream. She could not stop the trembling coming from the core of her body.

"Pfft..., hey, Asada~" While her fingertip was still extended, Endou spoke in a voice mixed with laughter.

"So my older bro has a number of those model guns. Next time, I'll show it to you at school. You like them right, pistols."

Her tongue could not move. In her dry mouth, it just quivered in a troubled way.

Shino shook her head with a small stutter. If a real model gun was suddenly shown to her in school, she was likely to faint right there. Simply by imagining that scene, her stomach began to shrink, and her body could not help but bend down.

"Hey hey, don't puke Asada~-"

Behind her, there were still voices mixed with laughter.

"But when you puke and collapse in the middle of world history cla.s.s, it'll be super tough afterwards."

"Well, if it's here, then there are drunken old men puking quite often."

Louder laughter burst out.

I want to escape. I wish I could run away. But I can't do it. The two opposing thoughts echoed loudly inside her mind.

"For the time being, we'll let you off with what you have on you now, Asada. You look sick, anyway."

Endou reached out to the bag held by Shino's right hand, Shino really could not resist. 'Don't think about it, don't remember it.' While thinking that, the vision of her memory revived in a black brilliance. The heavy, wet feel of iron. The smell of gunpowder inside the nose- At that time, a shout sounded from behind her.

"This way! Mr. Patrolman, hurry!!"

A young man's voice.

Endou's hand moved quickly away from her bag. The three people ran out the front with amazing speed, mixing into the crowd of people in the shopping district.

This time her legs really lost strength, and Shino collapsed onto her knees, crouching.

She desperately tried to control her breathing, trying to keep herself from panicking. Slowly, the shoppers noisy conversation and the super market's grilled chicken smell came back and her nightmarish flashback faded away.

How many tens of seconds had she been in that state? Then, from behind, came a timid voice.

"...Are you okay, Asada-san?

Taking one last deep breath, Shino gathered strength in her weakened legs and stood up.

She adjusted her gla.s.ses while turning around, and saw a small skinny boy.

He wore jeans and a nylon pullover, with a dark green backpack over his shoulders. Along with his casual clothes, a black baseball cap sat over his little round face. Although he looked like a middle school student, the dark shadows beneath his eyes betrayed his youthful visage. Shino knew this boy's name. He was the only one in this town she could trust-or at least wasn't an enemy. In another world they have a good relationship like comrades.

Feeling her heartbeat finally settle down, Shino gave him a small smile and replied.

"...I am all right. Thank you, Shinkawa-kun-Where are the police?"

She looked at the back of the alley; it was dark and empty, and no one seemed to be appearing.

Shinkawa Kyouji scratched his head through his cap and smiled.

"It was a bluff. It happens a lot in movies and manga right? I wanted to try it once. I'm glad it worked."

Shino was somewhat amazed, and gently shook her head.

"...You always come up with these kinds of tricks in a flash-Why are you here?"

"Ah, I was at the game center over there. I came out the back door..."

Kyouji looked behind him. On the rain soaked concrete wall near the road, she really could see a small silver door.

"Those guys surrounded Asada-san. I really thought of dialing 110[2]..."

"Yes, you were a great help. Thank you." Shino smiled again, Kyouji also smiled for a moment, then returned to a worried look.

"...Asada-san, this kind of thing...does it happen a lot? That...even if it's me saying it, you should report this to the school..."

"It won't help, even if I do that. It's okay, if they go any further than this, I will really go to the police station. Then again, before worrying about other people, are you... all right?"

"Ah...I'm fine. I have not met those guys again."

The small boy, this time gave a self-delusional sort of smile.

Shinkawa Kyouji was Shino's cla.s.smate before the summer holidays. "Was," as he hadn't come to school since the second school semester.

From the rumors she'd heard, Kyouji was severely bullied by the seniors in his soccer club. His physique was small and his family owned a large hospital, which made him look like the perfect target. They didn't ask him for money outright like Endou's group did, but he paid for their food, entertainment and other sorts of stupid stuff, damaging his self-esteem in the process.

Natually, she had never heard about this directly from Kyouji.

They first got to know each other in June, in the nearby munic.i.p.al library.

Shino was in the second floor reading room, reading The World's Firearms. She had finished most of the graphic magazine.

At the time, she was finally able to look at such pictures without panicking, but looking at the page with "that gun" for around ten seconds was her limit. Right when she hurriedly closed the book, a voice came from behind '...Do you like guns?'

That the person who had said that was her cla.s.smate was something she didn't realize until later.

Shino had wanted to immediately answer, 'No way, it's the opposite'. However, then he would question why she was reading the magazine. It would be hard for her to offer a rational response, so she had just answered vaguely.

Now, Kyouji knew that Shino had an extreme fear of guns in the real world, but back then he misunderstood Shino's response. So, he smiled happily and sat in the chair next to her.

He pointed at the graphic magazine and talked about the firearms pictured, while Shino listened with cold sweat flowing within her. But among all that, Kyouji mentioned a "different world".

She knew that Full Dive game machines went on sale a few years ago, and she also knew about the term VRMMO. However, Shino had grown up without playing games, and believed that it was enough for "A World of Swords and Magic" to exist only in fantasy books. She wasn't interested in it.

But the virtual world Kyouji intimately described in a dreamlike way didn't have any swords or magic. In exchange-it had guns. That world's name was "Gun Gale Online" (GGO). The many firearms that exist, or have existed, in real life were precisely reproduced in that world, and the players use those weapons to kill each other in a gruesome wasteland.

Shino interrupted Kyouji, asking him with a sigh.

"-In the game...does this gun exist?"

The boy blinked in surprise, then nodded in an of course fashion.

If it's like that, Shino started thinking. In that virtual world, can she confront "that gun" again? Five years ago, her eleven year old heart was deeply pierced; that black gun left a bullet wound which would never disappear. Can she face that black gun once more; fight it; overcome it?

Shino firmly held her cold, sweat-soaked hands and, in cool voice, asked Kyouji, "To start playing this game, how much money is required?"

Half a year had pa.s.sed.

Inside Shino was born a girl named "Sinon", a ruthless sniper who became famous in the wasteland of GGO.

But, unfortunately, she still has not met an enemy with "that gun". So Shino does not know. Has her real self-not Sinon, but Asada Shino-really become strong, or not...?

The answer still eludes her. "...Hey, would you like a drink? My treat."

Kyouji's voice pulled Shino out of her deep thoughts. Looking up, she found the sun shining into the narrow alley had already begun to redden.

"...Really?"

Shino smiled, then Kyouji happily nodded.

"I want to hear about your recent rampaging story. In this alley, there's a quiet tea shop."

A few minutes later, sitting in a seat deep within the shop she was led to, holding her hands around a cup of nice, fragrant milk tea, she finally relaxed a bit. Endou will probably continue to find ways to bully her. Well, what will happen will happen, she thought, pushing those thoughts to a corner of her mind.

"I heard, the day before yesterday. You had a big success right?"

She looked up at Kyouji's voice. The skinny boy was poking at the half ball of vanilla ice-cream floating on top of his ice coffee with a spoon, looking at her with upturned eyes.

"...That's not true. The battle plan was a failure. In our squadron of six, four were killed. For an ambush that turned into a firefight, the result can't be called a win."

She replied with a shrug. Thinking of actual firearms in the real world could easily push her into panic, but recently, while talking about things inside GGO, she had managed to stay calm. It is like the virtual world was having a rehabilitation effect. "Still, it's amazing. That Minigun user "Behemoth" has never died in a group battle before this, I heard."

"Oh...is he that famous? I didn't see him in the "Bullet of Bullets" ranking, so I didn't know about him."

"There's a reason for that. No matter how strong the Minigun is said to be, carrying 500 rounds of ammo puts him overweight, so he can't run anymore. "BoB" is a solo encounter fight. If he gets sniped from long distances, it will be over. However if he has adequate support in a group battle, he's invincible. That weapon is against the rules."

Seeing Kyouji complain like that with a pout, Shino could not help smiling.

"...Then, my Hecate II would really be against the rules. After using it, I have to face a variety of troubles, too. That Behemoth-san is probably thinking the same thing, too."

"Geesh, that's luxurious trouble...So, what are your plans for the next BoB?"

"I will enter, of course. I have almost all of the previous top 20 ranked people's data collected. This time I plan to bring Hecate. This time, I will..."

Kill, she was going to say, then hurriedly covered up with: "...Try to reach the upper ranks."

Shino/Sinon partic.i.p.ated in the GGO ranking tournament two months ago, named "Bullet of Bullets". Thirty people who pa.s.sed the preliminaries entered the main tournament, a battle royal, vying to be the strongest. Despite her efforts, Sinon finished as rank 22nd. As the thirty partic.i.p.ants are randomly placed in a wide map at the start of BoB, there is a chance that you can be instantly forced into close range combat. So, she had used an a.s.sault rifle instead of the sniper rifle Hecate II. But during close combat, she was killed by a sniper with a "Remington M40" from afar.

Two months later, even if the gun was still hard to manage, she had gained experience with Hecate and gotten used to it. She also obtained a rare light sub-machine gun "MP7", so she could handle close combat more effectively. She will bring the huge rifle to enter the upcoming third BoB, she thought. Basically, she will hide behind cover-even if said to be unfair-waiting for a target to enter her view, and then blow them all away without leaving even one remaining.

In this GGO, filled with powerful warriors, she will kill all her enemies. And when she can be sure that she is the strongest-at that time, for sure...

Kyouji's regretful voice in her ear pulled Shino away from her dark thoughts.