Mental Health Counseling Program, Prototype 1—that was Yui's category within the system. As the name suggested, her duty was to monitor players' mental health and to appear, when necessary, to provide timely counseling.
But from the very start, Kayaba Akihiko had issued her an order forbidding any interference with the players. As a result, all she could do was watch as despairing players lost their reason and destroyed themselves, while she herself slid toward the collapse of a program conflict.
For an AI like her, one granted the ability to imitate emotions, perhaps every one of her actions was nothing more than pure imitation—including, perhaps, pretending after regaining her memories that nothing had happened at all.
The Cardinal System was the core system of SAO. Its significance was that, even with no one to maintain it, it could set its own standards and balance items, monster AI, and numerical values on its own.
Under its inspection, most of the items Yimi produced should never have been approved in the first place, let alone the things she created afterward. So ever since Yui recovered her memories, she had always believed that Yimi was in fact the Cardinal System itself.
For one thing, Yimi had appeared almost at the same moment as that original game crash. For another, Yui had never once been able to observe Yimi directly; apart from that single moment of collapse, she could basically only see Yimi by turning her gaze toward Kirito and Asuna.
Among the many players weighed down in spirit, that rare flicker of 'happiness' had made her intensely curious, and after looking into its cause she had succeeded in seeing Yimi once again.
The voice that had spoken that day was only her, trying to call out to Yimi through a bug-rift connected to the Knights of the Blood. But an act like that seemed to lie outside her authority as well, and so she had crashed from a system error.
Yimi, whose neck she was clinging to, tilted her head up and looked at the ceiling.
The little cat hadn't understood a single word. Programs, maintenance—none of these were words a child her age should have to deal with.
She put her shoes back on and pointed at Yui. "You're not allowed to sneak Mr. Crocodile onto the bed."
Then she turned and walked off, wanting to find Asuna and Kirito and get a clear answer out of them.
"What are you thinking about?"
Ever since Kirito joined the Knights of the Blood, this was the first time he and Asuna had shared a room—after all, it was only today that their relationship had truly been made clear.
Kirito held it in for a good while before asking a rather impolite question. "Asuna, does our relationship only exist inside the game?"
Marriage inside a game had never carried any real authority.
Asuna pouted. "Ask something like that and I'm going to get angry, you know. Are the tears you shed inside a game somehow fake?"
"Sorry."
"So then, next..." Asuna drew a deep breath, tapped the menu, and removed her outer garment.
"Eh? What are you doing?" Kirito flailed to cover his eyes.
"You're still asking what I'm doing? You obviously wanted this too, or you wouldn't have insisted on staying in the same room with me today, right?" Asuna glared at Kirito, flushed with embarrassment and indignation, because his show of innocence made her the awkward one.
This game let you unlock certain age-restricted behaviors from the menu. In other words, inside the game you could do that kind of thing too and get the pleasure of it...
Of course, she'd only heard about such things from the other female members of the guild—it wasn't as if she'd gone and researched it herself with nothing better to do.
"Asuna..."
"Creak——"
The door lock, set so that no one else could enter, was opened. Yimi looked at them in puzzlement. "What are you two doing?"
"Ah!"
With a startled cry, Asuna hurriedly pulled the blanket over herself, her eyes drifting everywhere. "Papa and Mama are going to sleep now. Is there something you need?"
Who's Papa and Mama?
Yimi planted her hands on her hips, displeased, but Asuna was already lying on the bed, so she walked over and stomped on the leg of Kirito, who was still standing.
"..."
"How are you two going to leave this world?" Yimi didn't waste words with them and got straight to the point.
"This doesn't really feel like a topic we can discuss with you." Kirito sat on the bed and patted the spot beside him to signal Yimi to sit too.
Yimi obediently sat down close beside him.
Kirito didn't answer right away; first he rested a hand on her head and ruffled it for a while.
"The truth is, we're not too sure about this kind of thing ourselves."
Giving himself time to think, he tried his best to come up with an explanation that wouldn't shatter her whole worldview. "You could say we're people from another world."
What was so strange about that?
Not seeing the shocked reaction he'd expected, Kirito coughed twice and went on. "There's an evil guy who locked up the 'souls' of more than ten thousand people from our world in here, and told us we have to defeat a hundred opponents before he'll send us home."
Aincrad was designed as a giant floating fortress banished into the sky, and inside it were most of the races the world was supposed to have—elves and the like.
But having lost the protection of the Great Holy Tree, this place had lost almost all its magic; you couldn't even do something as simple as draw a bow and loose an arrow. The only trace of magic left was things like Teleport Crystals, so explaining it with the word 'soul' should be something she could follow.
"By now we've already defeated more than sixty enemies, but..."
But what would happen after that? Would Kayaba Akihiko keep his promise, and if he did, what would become of this world?
In his humble view, the seed of the first-ever Full Dive game would absolutely never be abandoned. But this world, riddled with problems at every turn, would surely undergo sweeping revisions, even a rewrite—and when that happened, for people like Yimi and Yui who truly lived in this world, wouldn't it be the end of the world?
No matter how he put it, he couldn't bring himself to say these things aloud. The reason players avoided the topic of reality was likewise to keep everyone from dwelling on what would become of their real selves—all of them simply deceiving themselves, on and on...
Kirito lowered his head to meet the eyes of the little girl at his side, and found a lively luster shimmering in her big eyes.
"So what if, after you beat the enemies, that bad guy doesn't let you go home?"
"Mm, I've thought about that too... no, everyone has, I suppose."
Kirito clenched his fist. "But for us, this is the only hope we can grab hold of. Since the thing we can do is already laid out right in front of us, there's no reason to just leave it sitting there."
"..." Yimi opened her own system and set her gaze on that reassembly progress.
"With our bodies unable to move freely, all this time our families have had to rack their brains caring for us, and no one knows what it will all come to in the end. That's why I'm going to clear it. Sorry—I'll find a way to keep us from being split apart." Kirito hugged Yimi, giving her a simple bit of comfort.
At the final moment, Kayaba Akihiko, the mastermind behind it all, would surely appear, and Kirito wanted to talk with him.
After so much time, though the anger still lingered, Kirito's hatred for Kayaba Akihiko had long since dropped a great deal. It was terribly hypocritical to say so—this man had, after all, gotten thousands of people killed—but it was also thanks to Kayaba Akihiko that he'd been able to meet Asuna, and Yimi and Yui as well.
"Kirito..." Asuna slipped out from under the covers, sat down on Yimi's other side, and just as gently held her too.
"Also, there's a question I've kept turning over this whole past year: there's nothing more boring than watching other people play a game. So where on earth is this Kayaba Akihiko?"
Kirito recalled that scene from before he joined the Knights of the Blood. He figured it was most likely just him overthinking, but he couldn't quite rule out the possibility.
Also...
"Asuna, you're not wearing your clothes."
"Shut up!"
"?"
Weren't you the one who took them off yourself just now?
"..."
"What did you say to Papa and Mama?" Yui hugged Yimi again.
"They said it's a bad guy who won't let them go home, and that the bad guy might even be hiding among the players." It really did sound just like her own system.
Yimi grabbed the blanket and shook it out, making sure Yui hadn't secretly stashed Mr. Crocodile in it while she was gone.
"Meow?" Yui tilted her head, imitating Yimi's verbal tic.
"What's wrong?"
Yui shook her head. "I've never paid attention to any of that. But I know where the console of the GM Emergency Login System is—though it's very dangerous."