Chapter 22: Kataki Town

Soon enough, they’d crossed past the town’s feeble-looking gates, built in stone likewise, and veered into the humble, rustic streets comprising the space between the low buildings. Despite the care that seemed to have been put into flooring and other simpler maintenance, they were considerably narrower than the ones Haruto had raced in upon arriving.

Some occasional passersby had seemed to notice the scarlet motorcycle speeding around, and started to wave keenly at the incomers, some calling out to Suzuka, asking her about her latest job, how she’d been, or ‘did you finally buy a servant’, and ‘is that your new manservant??’ with a few sniggers to accompany it.

“Friends of yours?” asked Haruto.

“W-W-Well, it’s a small place... Most people know each other around here.” she answered, her ears gaining a slight red tint and her hands trembling slightly over the handlebars as she tried to keep her eyes on the road. Her voice sounded slightly more agitated now, but the boy paid it not much mind. “People will most likely end up remembering you… even if you try not to draw attention, at the end of the day it’s kind of useless…”

“That so…?”

He figured he should’ve been relieved upon finally seeing a place filled with people once again, on the upside. He couldn’t help but feel a somewhat heavy apprehension at the sight of those town’s residents, though. From a distance, he hadn’t felt it so strongly as he was now that they were passing near, though.

At first, they just seemed like typical people randomly pulled from different parts of the world and gathered up around here. Fat, thin, tall, short, black, white, red, brown, yellow, it was a mess. But easy to understand, nonetheless. The only thing most of those people had in common was age: they seemed to be extremely old for the most part, or at least middle-aged at the youngest. He would spot the occasional teenager or child on occasion, but they were much rarer, which only served to further cement just how out of place he and Suzuka were.

Even if it bothered him a bit, though, that wasn’t the source of his distrust. It was the way those residents were dressed. A few of them looked relatively normal, of course. But the majority was clad in a haphazard mix of robes, kimonos, dresses and tunics that looked like they’d been taken directly from some movie about Ancient Greece, crazy bandanas and headscarfs, victorian dresses and tailcoats, disturbingly lean bodysuits with more lamps and glitter on them than his eyes could handle, loincloth underwear ala-sumo wrestlers (and nothing else over it), and, goodness gracious, some were wearing medieval body armor. Honest-to-god, there were people wearing actual metal clothing walking along the streets and going about their day like it was nothing, covering their own face and everything. And that was only the beginning. Each new turn his eyes were met with even wider varieties of people and their respective dress codes, some of which couldn’t properly be described by a layman, even.

It looked almost like some sort of masquerade ball, the kind they’d show on TV dramas sometimes.

“Is it just me, or these people… Well…”

“Naturally, they were taken from all over the globe, and dropped here. This place has been around for so long, you’ll even get people far removed from our own times walking around next to us. The thing about the Cyberway is, if you die looking a certain way, you’ll stay that way forever. Therefore, you’ll meet a lot of people who dress and act like they’re still in feudal China, for example, even though they’re not anymore.”

“And you’re trying to tell me this is all normal to you and everyone else in this place?”

“Yeah. You get used to it.”

“So, then, you’re telling me there’s even weirder things looking around inside here as we speak? I mean, if even for the people here it’s weird, I can’t imagine what it could be...”

A few more stretches and turns in, Suzuka had stopped just short of one of the wider sidewalks, looking around for a moment.

“Alright. This town should have everything you need. What’s next, master?”

“...”

“Have you… decided, yet?”

“I’m not sure yet. There’s a lot to think about. In any case… First and foremost, I’d probably need a new car, right? Does this place have any kind of store, or something like that?”

“Yeah. I know the right place.”

“Good. With the money we have now, though…”

“I’d probably be able to strike up a deal with the lady, but you’d have to work with me to… Huh… You’ll see what I mean… Does that sound acceptable, master?” she asked, looking back at him.

“...”

“M-Master…?”

“Sounds good enough. Lead the way.”

“Okay, then– ahh, wait, no, no!! Wait a minute, master!!!”

Suddenly flustered again for some bizarre reason, Suzuka had suddenly started flailing her arms around as she turned around on the bike to face him, waving her hands above his head as if trying to swat at some flying bug.

“What are you doing!?” he shouted, startled.

“You can’t let everyone see your name, stupid!!” she yelled louder, her face almost taking on the color of her hair by now. It seemed she couldn’t deal with all the embarrassment, even though he didn’t really get what was there to be getting embarrassed about to begin with. “Y-You can’t let people see your name! Just one glance and they can read everything and then any social standing you could ever have goes down the drain!!”

She’d moved close enough now that her forehead had nearly hit him head on, which felt strangely threatening to Haruto, even though he could punish her at any moment.

“Huh… Okay? So, that’s what you mean…”

He suddenly remembered their exchange from a few hours prior. Residents of the Cyberway were supposed to choose a so-called wheel-name they could directly identify themselves with, and not their own name from the living world, which he guessed would sound too personal, or something like that. Just a hard glance above anyone’s head would reveal what they were called inside the system, which in his case would mean basically his real name.

“M-Master, you’ve got to change your name fast! P-People are starting to look! Please!!” she begged him, still flailing her arms.

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Right she was, of course. People had stopped in the middle of the walkway to look at the two of them, sitting in the motorcycle while doing that weird circus number, though he had a feeling the reason they’d stopped to look wasn’t really his name at all.

“Alright, I got it. Jeez.” he sighed. “Simmer down, already. It’s just a name. What do I have to do?”

“J-Just open your status menu and change it, dummy! It’s right there…!”

He opened it up as prompted, looking over each of the boxes and values until he found the one saying ‘Wheel-name’, right above his experience bar. As expected, it didn’t have anything on it at the moment. Truthfully, he didn’t really care about any of this, but if it managed to shut her up…

“Now, what? I just put something in here? How do I write?”

“Just think about it and it’ll write itself! Hurry!!”

“And what should I write? Any ideas?”

“It doesn’t matter!!” she yelled, now almost crying. “ Just choose something!!”

It would almost be cute, if the circumstances weren’t so ridiculous.

“Alright… If you say so…”

The moniker above his head was quickly changed right that moment.

Haruto Maekawa was now…

… H.A.R.U.T.O.

The girl looked at the moniker overhead, then back down at his face, then at the moniker again, then at his face again, her eyes betraying first surprise and then disappointment.

“Seriously…? That’s what you went with?”

“Yeah, why not? Did you expect something edgy like ‘Shadowfist’, or ‘Evil Avenger’ or something? It’s the name my mom chose for me, and I’m fine keeping it. Plus, it’s not like people are just gonna guess my full identity from this. Whoever manages to figure out what kind of ‘Haruto’ H.A.R.U.T.O. actually is, would probably know my face to begin with, and it’s not like I could hide it.”

“Alright, fine…” sighed Suzuka, figuring this wasn’t a matter important enough to fight over. “As long as you’ve got a moniker, it’ll be easier to move around here without people looking at you weirdly. It doesn’t really matter what you put in it, I guess.”

“Honestly, what’s wrong with not having a wheel-name, anyway?”

“It used to be an optional thing in people’s eyes, but when the rumors about otherworldly intruders started to spread, it all changed. According to many of them, if you were entering this place by force, that meant you wouldn’t be properly picked up by the system, since it doesn’t expect you. A lot of functions would fail then, like being able to put up a wheel-name for example. So people all decided to start using wheel-names no matter what. Whoever didn’t have one for one reason or another was cast asid– w-wa… where is everybody looking at!?!?!?”

Suzuka rapidly spun around to face the around fourteen or fifteen amused bystanders who had now stopped to see what the commotion around the two of them was, whispering and giggling among themselves for some reason.

“Get lost already!!” she demanded. “This is none of your business!!”

A few seconds later, they were all gone from sight. She quickly turned back towards him again, hammering down her point.

“What I’m trying to say is that people care about it, so it’s important that you have it done and changed like this. Got it?” was all she managed to say before turning the left cheek.

“Fine.” he nodded, though still somewhat lost.

Something caught his eye for a moment, though, drawing his sight straight downwards.

Right after shouting away at their weird observers just now, her skirt had rolled up while she was haphazardly moving back around, leaving her white underwear clearly visible from that angle.

“What is it now, Mas– W-W-Where are you looking at now!?” she yelled again, pulling the uniform’s skirt back down as fast as she could. “You stupid perv!! Degenerate! Go die!”

“Umm, no? I mean… It’s not my fault I’m not blind… What are you on about?”

“Whatever…!” she muttered, jumping off the motorcycle. “I’m not driving you around this place! We’re going on foot. Hmph…”

“If you… say so?”

He retrieved the vehicle into his inventory, following her lead around another corner and then down the street toward a particularly large stone building.

Up ahead, he could already see the gleaming sign indicating Jaya’s Great Deals, Ya Can’t Miss ‘Em, plastered messily onto the worn out marble above the entrance in a way that didn’t seem quite possible to begin with, which didn’t inspire much confidence, but he wanted to trust matchsticks knew what she was doing at least for the time being.

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