Lying on the bed, I closed my eyes and sought to return to the beginning of my dream. But I soon gave up, and after a while slowly opened my eyes once again. Thin wooden planks entered my sight instead of the white panels of hospital walls. I was lying in a soft mattress atop cotton sheets instead of some gel material. This was my — Kirigaya Kazuto’s room in the real world. I lifted up my upper body and looked around my surroundings. The 6-mat room had an uncommon floor made of natural wood. Only three pieces of furniture could be found within the room: a computer hard-drive, a router, and the bed I was sitting on. An old-looking piece of headgear was placed on the center of the vertically-raised routers. Its name was «Nerve Gear», a full dive model VR interface which had locked me inside a virtual reality world for two years. After a long and difficult battle, I was finally released from the machine, and could finally see, feel, and touch the real world. Yes, I had returned. But, the girl who had swung her sword and communed her heart with me was... Pain suddenly hit my chest, and I shifted my sight away from the Nerve Gear and stood up. I glanced at a mirror hanging on the wall. The embedded EL panel on the wall clearly displayed the current date and time. Sunday, January 19th, 2025. 7:15AM.