Sword Art Online - Phantom Bullet

Chapter 9

"That guy..."

CRACK!

"...REALLY INFURIATES ME!"

Exclaiming these words out of her mouth, Asada Shino used the toes of the sneakers she was wearing to kick at the swing.

This is a corner of a little park near Shino's home apartment. The sky had become dark, and this park was a simple area with only 2 recreational equipment and a pile of gravel, thus, no children would come here to play on Sundays.

Sitting beside Shino on the swing was Shinkawa Kyouji, who widened his eyes.

"That's rare of you, Asada-san...for you to criticize someone in such a straightforward manner."

"Because he's really..."

Shino stuck her hands inside her denim dress, leaned her back against the slanted pillar, twists her lips and continued,

"...So thick-skinned, loves to cause sexual harassment, likes to act cool... speaking of which, who the hell uses swords to fight in GGO!"

Everytime Shino would talk about how infuriating «that guy» was to her, she would kick a small pebble beside her foot.

"Also, that guy was even cross-dressing as a girl right at the beginning, and even asked me to choose clothing for him! I nearly lent him money as well!, AAAAHHHHHH!! DAMN IT, WHAT WITH THE 'WON'T YOU RESIGN?'!"

This grumbling continued until there were not suitably-sized stones around. Shino lowered her head, looked beside her, and found that Kyouji was really shocked as he used a certain delicate expression to look back at her.

"...What's the matter, Shinkawa-san?"

"No...it's not rare, but I guess this is the first time you bad-mouthed someone so much..."

"Eh...really?"

"Yeah. Because you normally didn't seem interested in others..."

"..."

On hearing him say this, she started to realize it,

Normally, she wouldn't interact with others enthusiastically. Even if someone pulls a prank—like Endou and the rest, she would merely feel irritated at most because she felt that there was no need to waste too much energy getting angry at them.

If she really had to say it, Shino couldn't even finish her own problems. Who has the time to bother about others? Even so, «that guy» really enraged her greatly for some inexplicable reason. It's been less than 24 hours since they interacted for the first time on Saturday afternoon, and yet that guy remained in her memories, and she couldn't get rid of it.

But it's no wonder that she would be this angry.

It's been half a year since Shino started playing the VRMMO-RPG «GGO». However, she had never met any gamer who invaded her privacy like this. And also, she was overly shocked that he held her hand during the rest period after the first round of the preliminaries, and was so shaken up that she missed two snipes from mid-range in the second round after that.

"...D, don't look at me like this. I get angry easily."

Shino deliberately dragged the pebble far away with her toes and kicked it hard at the shrubs as she mentioned that.

"Fufu~ is that so."

Kyouji continued to stare at Shino, but he seemed to remember something as he suddenly brought his body away from the swing and said enthusiastically,

"Then... do you want to ambush him in some training arena? If you want to snipe, I'll be the bait... but it's better to take revenge from the front right? I can immediately get 2, 3 outstanding machine gunners to help. Using beam matter to stun him and then deal an MPK isn't bad either."