Chapter 344 - 45: ALO

Chapter 344: Chapter 45: ALO

In Asuna’s room, Yui and Yimi had been arranged neatly, sitting side by side on the bed.

Incredibly, Kyouko had tacitly allowed the two little girls to live in their home, and the dinner the housekeeper made included portions for the two of them as well.

Since she hadn’t said anything about it, Yuuki Shouzou naturally had no objections either.

"Yimi, and Yui—answer me honestly: are you players?" Asuna picked up a potato chip in each hand, pointing one at Yimi and one at Yui.

In all her life, the only phenomena she’d seen that defied common sense were her two "daughters," so the odds that the two of them were "players" were very high.

Yui’s appearance had been abrupt, too—one day Yimi had simply dumped her onto the bed. Thinking about it that way, it suddenly seemed like some kind of online-multiplayer glitch...

"Players?" Yimi reached out to grab the chip.

Assuming she was playing dumb, Asuna popped the chip she’d been pointing at Yimi into her own mouth.

"Mngh."

Yui promptly raised her hand and answered eagerly, "Mama, I’m the SAO Mental Health Counseling Program, Prototype No. 1. I don’t know how I came to have a physical body in the real world either."

"Very good—Yui is cleared of suspicion." Asuna placed the whole box of chips she’d bought into Yui’s hands.

Yimi hurriedly raised her hand to copy off her homework. "I’m the SAO Mental Health... Counseling..."

"That excuse has already been used." Asuna lightly rapped her on the head, then took back the chips she’d just handed to Yui. "And Yui—you’re under suspicion again."

Yui, who had just been about to open the chips: "..."

As she had before, she draped herself around Yimi’s neck and pressed her face right up against her, staring, trying to pile guilt onto the little cat.

Ordinarily Kyouko was very strict about things like potato chips, but perhaps because she’d gotten it out of her system spanking Asuna’s backside, or perhaps because she knew Asuna didn’t intend to eat them herself, this time she merely turned a blind eye.

Asuna asked again, "Is it because you’re supposed to keep it secret from the NPCs, or something like that? No... I’ve already figured it out myself. If there were a rule like that, then the moment I guessed it, something like a car accident should have come along to kill me off, right?"

She thought for a few seconds, then put to the two girls the question she most wanted to ask. "I remember there was a character-creation screen when we first entered SAO. I just went with the default version myself—but the two of you aren’t custom-made faces, are you?"

Asuna often slept with the two little girls in her arms, and she couldn’t bear to imagine suddenly learning that the little ladies she doted on as daughters were really some middle-aged men wearing skins.

"Character creation?" Yimi had never heard the term.

"It means adjusting your own appearance inside a game while you play."

Yui answered her, then answered Asuna. "Mama, both my program and my appearance were designed inside SAO."

"This is just how I’ve always looked."

She had originally been a little cat, but once grown, this was what she’d look like—so Yimi’s appearance was real.

Asuna breathed a sigh of relief. "A minor was actually able to play a game for so long? It seems like all your waking hours were spent in the game—was that all right for your body in reality?"

"What body in reality? I came in directly." Yimi had heard Kirito say their souls had been trapped in that world, so she knew what Asuna was getting at.

"Eh?"

Startled, Asuna pinched Yimi’s cheeks, kneading and rubbing them. "Yimi doesn’t need to leave this world?"

This higher-dimensional way of gaming seemed rather different from what she’d imagined.

Yimi hurriedly shook her head. "I’m gonna go, but I have to wait for the system to be fixed. I used the power the old geezer gave me before, and I broke it."

"The old geezer? Is that your papa?" Asuna felt a little hurt, struck for a moment by the feeling of an empty-nester who didn’t know whether her children would ever come visit again.

"The old geezer is just the old geezer."

Yimi thought about it, then explained using the scraps of knowledge she’d picked up in the Holy Grail world. "Other people say he’s the son of God."

"..." Asuna’s hand froze. "Then there wouldn’t be any other players in this world... I mean, any other outsiders, would there?"

"I’ve only ever met Diego, but I beat him."

...

As an honest, good child, Yimi successfully won the potato chips, Yui included.

Walking out of the room hand in hand, they could see Kyouko sitting there, fiddling with something like a pair of VR goggles.

Yuuki Shouzou had been true to his word: after Asuna woke, he’d resigned his post at the company and was now semi-retired.

This device was one of the things he’d brought back from the company—a relatively safe FullDive device, an AmuSphere. Because of what had happened to her daughter, and the views someone of her age already held about games, Kyouko was in fact deeply averse to it.

As a university professor, she was fairly open-minded on this point: whatever this world truly was, their focus should be on their own lives.

Still, too many worldview-shattering things had happened, and though she was embarrassed to admit it, she’d developed at least a little curiosity about the game world her daughter spoke of.

Paw, paw.

Yimi suddenly flopped down in front of her.

Kyouko set down the thing in her hands and regarded her with a complicated look. "What is it? Are you hungry?"

Could it be that what this little cat was really supposed to feed on was incense offerings?

Yimi pointed at what was in her hands. "What’s that you’re holding?"

The color scheme and texture were a lot like Little White’s.

Since the bad woman had given her dinner that evening, she would forgive the bad woman’s disrespect for now.

"This isn’t..."

She instinctively wanted to put it away, but then Kyouko wondered—could a little squirt like this really be led astray from her ambitions by a mere plaything?

Asuna had come home with an attitude that said she meant to raise them, even going so far as to have the little girl call her Mama.

Kyouko closed her eyes and took a sip of coffee. "How old are you?"

"A little over one." In truth, counting the time across all the worlds, she was already over two, but Yimi had no concept of years.

"Grandma, I’m a little over one too," Yui piped up.

Kyouko spat the coffee in her mouth back into the cup and coughed for a while.

She looked at the little girls for a moment, then closed her eyes, put the device away, and headed for the bedroom. "It’s fine—go to bed early."

"I want to look at that."

Yimi pointed at the thing in Kyouko’s hands, then rummaged through her inventory, dug out a handful of candy the Clearers had offered up to her, and held it high to hand to Kyouko.

"..."

...

Yimi got it in her hands.

Since they’d already formed the habit of warming each other’s beds, Yimi and Yui had been assigned to the same room.

"This is how it goes, right?" Yui helped her study the thing.

It wasn’t a helmet, after all, so there was no need to worry about it snagging her cat ears.

Yimi was rather unhappy, though—she’d only traded for it because she thought it might have something to do with Little White, and now it turned out she had to put it on herself.

"After you play for a bit, you have to let me have a turn too, okay?" Yui quickly figured out how to operate it. "Now silently think, ’Start.’"

"Start."

Yimi’s vision blurred, and she entered the login screen.

Select your race.

Yimi flipped through them in puzzlement and found the Cait Sith.

A kitty would never turn traitor.