Sword Art Online (18)
Sword Art Online (18)
Shino does not know her father's face.
It does not mean she has no memories of her father in the real world; it literally means she has never even seen the person called "father," not even in photos or videos.
It is said that her father passed away in a traffic accident when Shino was not even two years old.
That day, the family of three—father, mother, and Shino—were driving along a one-lane road following a slope located on the border of a certain prefecture in Tohoku to spend the year-end holidays at her maternal grandparents' house. Because they had left Tokyo late, it was already past 11 o'clock.
The cause of the accident was concluded, through skid marks at the scene, to be a truck that failed to navigate the curve properly and swerved out into the opposing lane.
The truck driver was ejected through the windshield onto the road surface and died almost instantly.
The small car, struck directly on the right side, went over the guardrail and fell down the mountain slope, coming to a stop while caught on two trees.
At that point, her father, who was driving, had suffered critical injuries and was unconscious, but he did not die instantly. Her mother in the passenger seat had only suffered a simple fracture of her left femur, and young Shino, who was securely fastened in a child car seat in the back, was almost completely unharmed. However, she does not have a single fragment of memory from that time.
The misfortune was that the road was one rarely used even in that region, and especially being late at night, traffic was completely cut off. Also, the mobile terminal inside the car was broken due to the impact of the collision.
The next morning, it was already six hours later when a passing driver witnessed the accident scene and reported it.
In the meantime, Shino's mother had no choice but to just watch from the side as her father slowly died from internal bleeding.
That was when a part of her mother's heart broke slightly.
After the accident, her mother's time regressed to her teenage years, before she had met her father. Mother and Shino left their home in Tokyo and relied on her maternal grandparents, but her mother disposed of all of her father's belongings, especially photos and videos, and would not talk about their memories at all.
Her mother came to live a life like a country girl who thoroughly desired only peace and stillness. How she perceived Shino is something that remains unclear even now, 15 years after the accident. Perhaps she might have thought of her as a younger sister, but fortunately, her mother loved Shino deeply even after the accident. She remembers her reading picture books and singing lullabies every night.
So, the mother in Shino's memory was always a fragile, easily hurt, girl-like figure. Naturally, as she grew up, Shino came to think that she had to conduct herself properly. That she had to protect her mother.
When her grandparents were out, there was an incident where her mother got scared because a persistent salesman sat down at the entrance. Nine-year-old Shino chased him away by saying she would call the police if he didn't leave instead of her mother.
To Shino, the outside world was always an existence full of elements that threatened her quiet life with her mother. Must protect, must protect. She always stared only at that.
At eleven, in the 5th grade of elementary school, Shino rarely played outside.
Her routine was to return home straight from school and read books borrowed from the library. Her grades were good, but she had few friends. She was overly sensitive to external interference, and she once beat a boy who played an innocent prank of hiding her indoor shoes so badly that he got a nosebleed.
One Saturday afternoon, not long after the second semester began.
Shino and her mother went out together to a small nearby post office. There were no other customers besides the two of them.
While her mother went to the counter to submit documents, Shino was sitting on the waiting bench, swinging her legs and reading a book she had brought from home. She didn't remember the title.
Kkii-ik.
At the sound of the door, she looked up and saw a man entering. He was a gaunt, middle-aged man in grey clothes, holding a Boston bag in one hand.
The man stopped at the entrance and looked around the post office once. He briefly made eye contact with Shino. She thought the color of his eyes was strange.
In the middle of the yellowish whites of his eyes, pitch-black pupils like deep holes were moving busily here and there. Thinking about it now, it was that his pupils were excessively dilated. It was later revealed that the man had injected stimulants just before appearing at the post office.
Before Shino could even wonder, the man approached the counter with quick steps.
The man suddenly grabbed the right arm of her mother, who was doing some procedure at the "Deposit / Savings" counter. And then he shoved her away with his left hand. Her mother couldn't even scream and fell, freezing with her eyes wide open in shock.
Shino jumped up. She was about to protest in a loud voice against the unreasonable violence her beloved mother had suffered. At that moment.
The man slammed the Boston bag down on the counter and pulled out something pitch-black from inside.
She realized it was a handgun when the man held it up with his right hand and pointed it at the male employee at the counter.
'A handgun? A toy... No, a real robber?!'
Countless words crossed Shino's consciousness.
"Put the money in this bag!"
The man shouted with a cracked voice. The shouts burst out one after another.
"Put both hands on the desk! Don't press the alarm button! You guys don't move either!"
He moved the handgun left and right, keeping the few employees inside in check.
Shino thought, shouldn't she run out of the post office right now and ask for help? But she couldn't leave her mother, who had fallen to the floor.
Even while she hesitated, the man was shouting again.
"Put the money in quickly!! Everything you have!! Do it fast!!"
The male employee at the counter, while his face stiffened, held out a stack of bills about 5 centimeters thick with his right hand.
The air in the room seemed to swell up for a moment. Both her ears rang.
It took time to realize that it was because of a high-pitched explosive sound. Following that, a small metallic sound of ting continued, and something bounced off the wall and rolled to Shino's feet. It was a golden, slender metal cylinder.
When she looked up again, the male employee beyond the counter had his eyes wide open and was clutching his chest with both hands. A faint red stain was visible on the white dress shirt under his tie. Just as she thought that, the employee tilted backward with his chair and collapsed along with the document cabinet next to him.
"I told you not to press the button!!"
The man's voice was shrilly high, and his tone was unstable. She could see his right hand holding the gun trembling. A smell similar to firecrackers stung her nose.
"Hey, you! Come here and put the money in!"
On the side where the man pointed the handgun, two female employees were standing frozen.
"Aren't you coming quickly?!"
The man's voice rang out sharply, but the female employees just shook their heads thinly and didn't try to move. They must have received training for robbery incidents, but no manual could block an actually fired bullet.
The man got angry and kicked the area under the counter several times, and then, thinking of shooting one more person, he lifted his right hand holding the handgun again. The female employees sat down, letting out high-pitched screams.
However, at that moment, the man half-turned his body and looked toward the customer waiting area.
"If you don't do it quickly, I'll shoot again! I'm going to shoot!!"
What the man aimed at with his handgun was—Shino's mother, who was lying on the floor with her hollow eyes directed at the empty air.
Due to the heavy burden brought by the incident that happened right in front of her, her mother seemed unable to move at all. Instantly, Shino thought.
'I, must, protect Mom.'
Shino's belief, the power of her will that she had always thought of since her infancy, moved Shino's body.
Shino, who had thrown her book and ran out, hung onto the man's right hand holding the handgun and bit down with all her might. The sharp teeth of a child easily dug into the man's tendons.
"Aaaack!"
The man screamed in surprise and swung his right arm along with Shino. Shino's body hit the side of the counter, and at that moment, two of her baby teeth fell out, but she didn't know it at all at the time. It was because the pitch-black handgun that had slipped from the man's hand rolled in front of her eyes. Shino picked it up unconsciously.
It was heavy.
The weight of the metal that was transmitted heavily to both arms, the grip with vertical lines was soaked with the man's sweat that he had been holding until just a moment ago, and it was radiating heat like a living thing because of the man's body temperature.
Shino, even as a child, had enough knowledge to know what kind of tool it was for.
If she uses this, she can stop the scary man. Led by that thought, Shino lifted the handgun as if imitating, hooked both index fingers on the trigger, and pointed it at the man.
An eleven-year-old girl probably couldn't have aimed and fired a handgun properly.
However, the moment she thought the gun would be taken away because her wrist was held tightly by the man, Shino reflexively pulled the trigger.
A fierce impact was transmitted from both hands through her elbows to her shoulders, but the recoil energy that should have turned the muzzle in a strange direction was almost absorbed by the man's two hands. The air burst out hotly again.
The man made a hiccup-like sound, let go of his hand from Shino, and then slowly retreated a few steps just like that.
On the abdomen of the man's patterned grey shirt, a dark red circle was spreading rapidly.
"Aa......aaaaaa!!"
Screaming a loud sound, the man clutched his stomach with both hands. Perhaps a thick blood vessel had burst, and a stream of blood sprayed out from between his fingers.
But the man did not fall. The full metal jacket bullet used for target practice penetrates the human body as it is, so the stopping power itself is low.
The man let out a howl and directed his blood-stained hands toward Shino, trying to grab her again. The blood that sprayed from his wound poured onto Shino's hands as well.
Trembling as if convulsing, both hands pulled the trigger again.
This time, the handgun jumped up loudly, and sharp pain ran through her elbows and both shoulders. Her body was bounced backward, and her back collided with the counter, making her breathless. She didn't really feel the firing sound anymore.
The second bullet hit under the man's right collarbone, penetrated again, and hit the wall behind him. The man staggered, slipped on the blood he had spilled, and fell onto the linoleum floor.
"Uaaaaaack!!"
However, he still didn't stop moving. He let out a roar of anger and placed both hands on the floor to try to get up again.
Shino fell into a panic. She thought that if she didn't stop the man for sure this time, she and her mother would definitely die.
Ignoring the pain in both arms that felt like they were going to be torn off, she stepped forward two steps. Shino aimed the muzzle at the center of the man's body, who was trying to lift his upper body about 2 centimeters in a lying position.
And the moment she was about to pull the trigger just like that, a voice came from behind.
"Stop now."
Seu-euk.
A warm hand caught her hand and lowered it to the floor.
Then, the muzzle pointed to the floor by itself. Shino turned her head with a trembling body to see who was behind her.
It was a handsome boy.
A boy with a better appearance than anyone else, even if she searched her entire life.
The boy was looking at her with a somehow sad face.
"Leave this to me and rest."
"...Ah."
A gentle voice.
At that, Shino felt her body, which had been stiffened due to tension until now, loosen up.
A body trembling like an aspen tree.
The boy stroked her hair as if to reassure her, and then looked forward. There was the robber, glaring at this side as if to kill them.
"Hoo."
The boy, who let out a short breath, raised a wooden sword.
And then, he struck down with speed like a flash of light. The wooden sword crushed the wrist of the robber who was reaching out his hand as if it were alive, and then changed direction to strike the back of his neck.
"Ggeu-eok...."
The eyes of the robber, who was hit on the back of the neck, rolled back.
And then, he fainted and collapsed, foaming at the mouth just like that.
"......Huh?"
Shino, who was watching that scene, opened her eyes wide.
Shino moved her face and turned her gaze to her mother, who had fallen on the floor a few meters away. And in the eyes of the mother she loved more than anyone in this world—.
She clearly saw the light of distinct terror and fear directed at herself.
Shino dropped her gaze to her hands.
Both hands, still tightly gripping the handgun grip, are dotted and stained with sticky, dark red liquid.
Shino opened her mouth and only then began to let out a piercing scream.
"Aaaaaa......!!"
While squeezing out a thin scream from her throat, Shino was staring at the Procyon SL held in both hands. She saw sticky, wet blood on both backs of her hands and between her fingers.
Even if she blinked several times, it didn't disappear. Drip, drip, sticky droplets were falling at her feet. Suddenly, liquid overflowed from both her eyes.
The boy who approached such a girl...... Seojun held her in his arms and patted her back.
"Sorry I'm late."
Shino didn't know why the boy was apologizing.
However, strangely, her heart, which had been chaotic until just a moment ago, calmed down and she felt relieved.