Her Mission To Save Them All || Sword Art Online Fanfic

Chapter 16

POV: Sachi

Worry is like a constant weight on your back, sometimes it is light, so light you almost forget it is there, pressing into your spine. Sometimes it is so weighty that you feel that your whole body is going to collapse.

Sometimes it is so in-between that you can't tell which is which.

I am going back to help them. I step another 10 metres along with the four of my guild-mates. I am not going back to help them. I am going back to help. I am not.

It is like a tilting scale, tipping one way then the other, never quite fully on one side before swing straight over to the other. I am going to help. I am not going to help.

I take a deep breath.

Even if I go back, what could I possibly do compared to Kira? Would I even be brave enough to do anything? But it is my fault we are even parting because I am so weak. So pathetic. I couldn't stop my brother then, what makes me think that I could stop Kira from throwing her life away?

"Hey Sachi, are you okay?" Keita asks me warmly, a hint of worry in his soft voice.

"Yeah." I force a smile onto my face but it is like it doesn't quite fit.

The mood plummets suddenly into a cold silence. The kind that is like ice, freezing and uncomfortable to touch for too long. In a couple of months, the weather should be populated with snowflakes rather than these annoying petals.

I push one aside as it falls it onto of my face and crunch it into my fist. I am not standing by while people throw their lives away anymore, I cant. I can't abandon the boy we gave me mine back either.

"I need to go the toilet," I announce quickly, the best excuse I can think of.

Ducker visibly lowers his shoulders, complaining loudly "Can you wait until we get back?"

I shake my head urgently while I cringe inside and I am suddenly thinking this is a bad idea before Keita sighs "Just be quick."

I dart just beyond the trees, making sure they can't see me before escaping to the beige path that twists up to the dungeon as swift as my body can take me.

************

There seems to more people around than before so I have to shove the mass of people to get to the front. I hear whispers about a challenge but I try to pay no attention to it.

My heart plunges to the bottom of my rib cage when I see the pink slab of jelly-like substance covering the entrance. No! No! No! My breath hitches as I reach out to it, hoping I can still get through.

Hope is such a cruel thing.

A cool touch holds back, firmly but not suffocating. As I whirl, I think it maybe be Keita but I greet a girl. I don't take much of her in, only her pretty golden hair, braided back into two plaits.

"Don't, it kills any player who isn't taking part in the Sakura Wolf Romance Challenge." She tilts her head to the door.

"Vice commander!" So one else comes up to the beauty, a warning in his voice but the commander brushes him aside.

But only a part of my brain takes that exchange in. My brain erupts into white noise. The possibility that Kyo and Kira taking part in "Romance" makes me even more eager to get in.

"We think that it works by the NerveGear sensing your heart rate and your brains impulses to only allows the two players who like each other in." The girl speculates, no, Asuna speculates if I heard her comrades correctly. "If you still want to go in, I won't stop you."