October 7, 2022 Tokyo, Setagaya.
The room was dark except for the harsh white glow of six computer monitors arranged across a desk buried beneath books and loose sheets of paper.
Their light washed one corner of the cramped apartment in a pallid glare, making the rest of the room seem even darker by comparison.
Elsewhere, only one or two tiny indicator lights blinked like distant stars.
One of those lights changed from green to red.
The boy lying on the bed slowly regained consciousness as his mind was pulled out of FullDive.
His eyes opened, and the LED near his forehead dimmed before going dark.
Having been forcibly logged out, Henshi Shindo remained still for a few moments while his senses adjusted to the transition from FullDive back to reality.
Then he reached beneath his chin, released the fastening strap, and lifted the streamlined helmet of the NerveGear away from his head.
Still looking half asleep, Shindo glanced toward the nixie-tube clock beside his bed.
17:31:23 That time meant the two-month closed beta test for Sword Art Online, or SAO, had officially come to an end.
With it, Shindo’s own time as an SAO beta tester had reached its conclusion.
Once the lingering fog had cleared from his head, he got up and switched on the lights.
The entire room immediately flooded with brightness.
He walked over to the computer desk, picked up a pen, and opened the thick strategy guide he had been compiling throughout the beta.
There, he began recording the final pieces of information he had gathered inside SAO that day.
By the time he finished filling several more lines with hurried handwriting, Shindo finally let out a long breath of relief.
He slumped back into his chair and released the pen, which rolled across the desktop with a soft clatter until it struck a notebook bound to resemble an old hardcover book.
His eyes shifted toward it.
Stretching as far as he could without getting out of the chair, Shindo hooked the notebook with his fingertips and pulled it closer.
The pages felt no different from those of an ordinary book, but what they contained was anything but ordinary.
The God’s World Setting Compendium.
Those were the words printed on its title page.
Shindo had never liked the name.
It sounded like something a child would invent after getting carried away with his own imagination, piling grandiose words together because he thought they sounded impressive.
As for where the book had come from, that story went back more than a year, to the period shortly before summer vacation when Shindo had still been a second-year middle school student.
He had been sitting in his usual seat near the window at the back of the classroom, staring outside in boredom.
His mathematics teacher was passionately explaining the lesson at the front of the room, but Shindo had already taught himself almost everything in the middle school curriculum.
To him, the lecture was little more than background noise buzzing around his ears.
That was when the notebook fell out of the sky.
It landed on the grass just beyond the classroom window.
The sight had immediately reminded him of Light Yagami.
After class, Shindo went outside and picked it up from the grass in much the same way Light had once picked up the Death Note.
Unfortunately—or perhaps fortunately—what Shindo found was not a Death Note.
There was no apple-loving Ryuk waiting nearby, nor did any other supposed Shinigami appear before him.
But the moment he opened the notebook’s cover, the entire world stopped.
A small bird descending toward the branch of a nearby tree froze with its claws still extended.
Inside the classroom, an eraser that someone had accidentally knocked off a desk hung motionless in midair.
Even the Boeing passenger jet crossing the sky above had come to a complete standstill, its two white contrails suspended behind its wings.
Then golden-red flames erupted across the open pages.
They did not consume the notebook.
Instead, they crawled over the title page and first sheet like living tongues, burning away parts of the paper until words appeared within the intricate patterns left behind by the ash.
That was how the notebook revealed both its name and its contents.
Fourteen years after arriving in this world, Henshi Shindo had finally received an answer from the strange second life into which he had been born.
SAO — Sword Art Online Those words occupied the top of the first page.
To their left were several rows of much smaller writing, along with Shindo’s own name.
At first, none of that seemed especially important.
It was only after he cautiously skimmed through the notebook that he began to understand what it actually wanted from him.
The Compendium—or perhaps whoever had originally created it—was offering him an extraordinarily generous bargain.
Shindo was to enter the world of Sword Art Online and experience the death game for himself.
Everything he encountered and learned there would then serve as reference material for a god creating worlds of its own.
In exchange, the notebook made a series of promises.
[Promises of the God’s World Setting Compendium] [1.
Upon entering a recorded world, anything acquired within that world may be converted into reality.] [2.
Upon entering a recorded world, authority shall be granted in the name of God, providing an opportunity within the permitted scope to influence reality.] [3.
…] There were many more clauses, but the first two were the ones Shindo cared about.
Stripped of all the pompous wording, they amounted to something much simpler: ‘Everything I obtain in the game can become real, and I can gain the power to change reality.’ For Shindo at the time, there could hardly have been a more tempting offer.
The same was still true now.
Of course, he had never completely trusted the notebook’s promised reward.
There was no guarantee that any of it would actually happen.
Then, in May 2021, ARGUS publicly announced the NerveGear.
The device went on sale one year later, in May 2022.
Around the same time, advertisements for Sword Art Online began appearing everywhere, covering the streets and giant screens of Shibuya and Shinjuku.
Only then did Shindo finally understand exactly what kind of world he had been reincarnated into.
This was the real world of Sword Art Online.
It also forced him to reevaluate two girls at school whom he had always dismissed as astonishing coincidences.
Their appearances and ages had matched characters from his memories so closely that he had occasionally wondered about them, but he had never seriously believed they could actually be the same people.
They were.
Asuna Yuuki and Mito Tozawa.
Like Shindo, both lived in Setagaya, Tokyo, and attended the same middle school.
The realization had left him staring blankly for quite some time before everything finally clicked into place.
At first, however, Shindo had made no attempt to approach either of them.
In fact, he deliberately kept his distance from anything connected to SAO.
Who in their right mind would willingly involve themselves in a death game where the potential reward was nowhere near enough to justify the risk?
At the time, Shindo was a second-year student at the private Naoetsu Middle School.
His grades were exceptional enough that he had already secured advancement to its prestigious high school division, which was well known for its university admission rate.
According to the life plan he had made for himself, he would finish teaching himself the high school curriculum long before graduation.
By his third year, his grades and academic ranking should have been high enough to earn him a recommendation to either the University of Tokyo or Keio.
A comfortable future as one of society’s winners had practically been waving at him from the finish line.
At least, that would have been the case if the Compendium had never appeared.
Yet some stubborn impulse kept bringing his thoughts back to SAO.
A world completely unlike reality, built from fantasy and imagination…
Even if he only saw it once, perhaps that would be enough to satisfy the curiosity that had been eating away at him.
Then August 2022 arrived, three months after the NerveGear’s commercial release, and SAO entered closed beta testing.
Unable to suppress his expectations any longer—and perhaps wanting to prove something to himself—Shindo applied for the beta.
He was accepted.
And now, after spending two months inside the game, the first tangible result of that decision had appeared in reality.
Ding-dong.
His phone chimed with the arrival of a new email.
Shindo unlocked it almost automatically and opened the notification.
It was from his bank.
A deposit had just been made into one of his accounts.
More than two million yen.
Shindo occasionally earned money by grinding games for other people, so seeing numbers attached to his bank balance was hardly unusual.
Even so, as he stared at the long string of digits on the small screen, genuine astonishment spread across his face.
During the beta, he had deliberately accumulated as much of SAO’s in-game currency, col, as he could.
But knowing what the Compendium had promised and actually watching more than two million col turn into more than two million yen were entirely different experiences.
Two million yen in two months.
Even a conservative estimate would put that at roughly twelve million yen a year, possibly much more.
In Japan, an annual income of ten million yen was already enough to place someone firmly among high earners, a group representing less than ten percent of the population.
And Shindo had an advantage no ordinary player could match.
He had already lived one life.
He knew Sword Art Online.
With the knowledge he possessed, calling him a beta tester hardly did him justice.
Once the game officially launched, he could become something beyond even a beater.
If proof like this was not enough to make Henshi Shindo commit to SAO, then nothing would be.
Without hesitating for long, he transferred two million yen from the newly deposited money into Aunt Hirako’s account.
November 6, 2022, at 1:00 p.m.
That was when SAO would officially open its servers to players.
According to Shindo’s memories, Akihiko Kayaba would later appear before the trapped players as the game’s administrator and explain what had happened.
By approximately six that evening, the true nature of Sword Art Online would be revealed to everyone inside.
That day would become known as the Day of Beginnings.
Less than a month remained.
Shindo intended to prepare as thoroughly as possible before then, and the money he had just transferred to Aunt Hirako was part of that preparation.
If he never came back from SAO, he hoped those numbers in a bank account could at least repay a small fraction of what Aunt Hirako and her family had done for him throughout his childhood.
Henshi Shindo was an orphan.
His parents in this life had died in an accident not long after he was born.
They had left him an estate and a large house, but Shindo had not returned there in a very long time.
His gaze wandered back to the nixie-tube clock beside the bed.
18:01:53 The next minute was approaching.
Shindo tossed the Compendium back onto his cluttered desk and headed straight for the bathroom.
A moment later, the sound of running water filled the apartment.
Standing before the half-length mirror, he cupped cold water in both hands and splashed it over his face.
The chill of the autumn water cooled the lingering heat beneath his skin and, with it, eased some of the tension that had been building inside him.
He swept his wet bangs back over his forehead until the roots of his hair were visible.
Several teardrop-shaped beads of water slipped down the bridge of his nose before falling from its tip.
A handsome young face stared back at him from the mirror.
At fifteen, there was still a trace of boyishness in his features, but the slight curve that appeared at the corner of his mouth carried an easy confidence that did not quite match his age.
Shindo quickly pulled on a hoodie, slipped his music player into the front pocket, connected his earphones, and left the dim room behind.
He had barely made it downstairs when a cheerful little voice called out to him.
“Onii-chan~~!” Five-year-old Mano Hayasaka, who had a habit of waiting around outside Shindo’s room, immediately brightened when she saw him.
Hugging a rabbit plushie to her chest, she tottered toward him on unsteady little steps that made her look rather like a rabbit herself before raising both arms expectantly.
Shindo bent down and picked her up.
Mano’s chubby little arms wrapped naturally around his neck and shoulders.
Something about the warmth of the small child in his arms settled his mood almost immediately.
“Mano, can you smell anything?” He gently patted her head, making the two little horn-shaped buns in her hair bob back and forth.
“Onii-chan smells nice…” Mano answered with another bright smile.
Then she sniffed the air and added, “And~~ I can smell Mama’s three-color dango!” “Are you going running, Onii-chan?” “Yeah.” Shindo lightly pinched the tip of her nose.
“Want anything?
I’ll pick something up on the way back.” “Strawberry daifuku…
Is that okay?” “Of course it is.” After agreeing, Shindo set Mano back down on the sofa and placed an oversized raccoon plushie beside her to keep her company.
Through the frosted-glass divider, he could see Aunt Hirako moving around the kitchen.
“Aunt Hirako, I’m heading out for my evening run!” “Shindo?
Wait—” Aunt Hirako hurried out of the kitchen with her phone still in one hand, but Shindo had already crossed the entryway and closed the front door behind him.
“Shin—” The rest of his name died on her lips.
She lowered her eyes to the email displayed on her phone and stared again at the long string of numbers.
“That boy…” Then her expression softened.
“Take care.” Her voice carried clearly through the door.
Shindo heard her.
For a moment, he remained leaning against the other side of it.
Then he pushed himself upright, opened the gate in the garden wall, pulled up the hood of his sweatshirt, and stepped out into Setagaya as twilight faded toward night.
He ran without stopping from Seijo toward Shimokitazawa.
Red maple leaves stretched beneath his feet in long carpets, turning both the road ahead and the path behind him shades of orange and crimson.
Shindo finally slowed to a stop at the entrance to the Shimokitazawa shopping district.
Looking down the street, he found almost every storefront plastered with advertisements for the official release of SAO.
Several enormous lines stretched from nearby stores all the way toward the far end of his vision, packed with people eager for the chance to enter an entirely new world.
Perhaps none of them knew what they would be facing one month from now.
Shindo did.
And there was no hesitation left in his expression.
The song playing through his earphones fell briefly quiet as one track ended.
A few breaths later, the triumphant opening notes of LiSA’s “crossing field” began to play.
Shindo smiled to himself.
Personally, he preferred LiSA’s “Shirushi.” Unfortunately, he had no say in the choice.
“You came?” Shindo closed his eyes.
When he opened them again, the crowded shopping street was empty.
The lights inside the stores still shone.
Music continued playing through his earphones.
A poster came loose somewhere ahead and drifted slowly down onto the deserted street.
But every living presence was gone.
“As you wished.” Shindo stepped forward without hesitation, carrying an almost unstoppable momentum with him.
The shopping district suddenly erupted with the roar of an enormous crowd.
It sounded like thousands of people screaming themselves hoarse, cheering wildly as though his answer had earned their highest praise.
Something surged through Shindo in response, not merely around him but from somewhere deep inside his body and mind.
He liked this feeling.
There was an intoxicating lightness to it, as though he could throw himself headlong into some glittering obsession and let it swallow him whole.
It was the exhilaration of an arrogant gambler pushing every last chip onto the roulette table, staking himself completely on a single spin.
Yet the sensation was too perfectly arranged.
Too deliberate.
Shindo could feel every beat of his heart pumping blood through his body, while something hot and violent seemed to gather beneath the surface, hidden behind the easy smile of a JOKER.
He placed his left hand over his chest.
The beast trapped inside roared against its cage, each thunderous pulse seeming to echo through the hollow of his ribs and send a tremor through his body.
Shindo raised his right index finger and rested it lightly against his lips.
“Shh.” The soaring music in his earphones softened.
The turbulent tide inside him receded as though withdrawing from the shore.
The scorching heat died down with it, leaving behind only a thin column of imaginary smoke.
The deafening cheers vanished as abruptly as they had appeared.
The world became quiet again.
Before him lay the empty streets of Shimokitazawa, still and silent beneath the evening lights.
Shindo tightened his hood around his head, lowered his gaze, and walked slowly into the deserted shopping district.