and it wasn’t locked. Looking inside, a man was found lying on his futon wearing an AmuSphere, with a similar odor...” Ehem! A deliberately cleared throat put our conversation on hold; we looked at the same two women from before, at a table near ours, as they glared condemningly and gave us the evil eye. But, in a surprisingly bold move by Kikuoka, he nodded at them and continued our conversation. “...Well, let’s skip the details of the postmortem autopsy. This time, it was also confirmed to be death by heart failure. His name... let’s skip that too. Male, 31 years old. He was also a very strong GGO player and his character’s name... was «Usujio Tarako1»? Is this the right name?” “A while back in SAO, there was a guy called «Hokkai Ikura2», so they’re probably related. Was this Tarako-shi also on a TV program?” “No, this time it was an in-game incident. From the AmuSphere’s log, his connection was cut off about 3 days before the body was found, on the 25th of November, at 10:00:04 PM, Estimated time of death is also thought to be around that period. At that time, he was at Gurokken’s town square attending a Squadron - a guild, apparently - meeting. He’d jumped onto the stage to voice an opinion, and a player who crashed the meeting shot him with a gun. Although city streets are areas where all and any damage received would get instantly voided, he was angered by gunman’s assault and went after him, then suddenly disappeared. This information was also taken from a net forum thread, so the authenticity leaves much to be desired, but...” “The gunman, is it the same player from the «Zekushiido» incident?” 1 ‘Tarako’ means ‘Cod Roe’ (as in the fish’s eggs). 2 ‘Ikura’ means ‘Salmon Roe’.