05: Phantom Bullet by Reki Kawahara

Author:Reki Kawahara [Kawahara, Reki]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Light Novel, Fiction
ISBN: 9784048687638
Published: 2010-08-10T04:00:00+00:00

Finally, her breath and pulse settled down, and Shino opened her eyes.

Lying face down on her bed, her left cheek on her pillow, in front of Shino's gaze was a full length mirror.

In the mirror, with wet hair clinging to her forehead, a girl looked back. A bit too skinny, with just her eyes appearing large. The nose was small and the lips thin. All in all, she appeared similar to a malnourished kitten.

The sniper rifle user of the wilderness, Sinon. Her build and the hairstyle with short hair tied on both sides of her face resembled Shino, but except for that, nothing else. That girl, as it were, was a fierce wildcat.

Though extremely scared, when she first logged into GGO and was taken to that battlefield not knowing anything, Shino discovered something unexpected. It was very different from the real world's Japan, as the landscape was too much like another world. And in that world, if she tried to touch any kind of gun - no, even if she shot down other players, some of the tension would be remembered to some degree, but those detestable fits would not occur.

Shino was confident that she had finally found a way to overcome that memory. In fact, because she tried playing GGO, if she looked at pictures, the attacks no longer happened to some degree, and she seemed able to talk to Kyouji about the weapons in GGO.

No, it wasn't only that. Half a year ago, when she received the huge yet brutal rifle named «Hecate II», the current Shino was in love. While other girls her age had pets or stuffed animals to do so, Shino relaxed while stroking the smooth barrel, and if she leaned her cheek on the round stock, she felt warm.

Together with this gun, in the virtual wilderness, if she continues to fight, someday, her wounds will close and her fears will vanish. Believing that, she blew away innumerable monsters and players with certain kill bullets.

However.

Really? Is this really all right?

A voice in her heart asked back.

Sinon was already, out of tens of thousands of GGO players, someone in the top thirty. She freely commanded the anti-materiel rifle unlike anyone else at the level of actual combat. She could give anyone she captured in her scope certain death with her unstoppable bullets. A warrior with a heart of ice. It was not an exaggeration to say that was the existence the former Shino hoped to become.

And yet—the real world's Shino, as usual, can't even hold a model gun.

Truly... truly... is this all right?

The eyes of the girl in the mirror were, behind her glasses, shaking and seemed to be at a loss.

These glasses she began to wear last year did not have any prescription. They weren't for eye correction, but were for «protective equipment». The strong NXT polymer-made lenses, for example, would not break even if a bullet hit it—or so it was written in the leaflet. She doesn't know if it was true or not

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