“Look at me.”

The command was unlike any other she had felt from her Kirito-kun, so Asuna couldn’t find it in herself to resist such ‘power’ as she slowly opened her eyes, quickly loosing herself in those beautiful black orbs that were none other than her Kirito-kun’s eyes...

“Asuna... I chose you becaus-“

All of a sudden, a very familiar cry of “Onii-chan!” and right after that, an ‘unidentified’ figure that jumped on him interrupted his ‘important’ speech as he found himself submerged inside of the hot onsen water...

There were many times in Kirigaya Kazuto’s life where he felt conflicted about what to do. In most of those ‘instances’ that he failed to solve on his own, instead of facing the problem head on any longer or asking for help, he chose to just ‘run away’ and leave the problem to be solved at a later date, ‘maybe on another day’...

That ‘another day’, for ‘some’ reason, never came, such as the day when he finally confronted his ‘sister’, Sugu about her confession... Never did it come...

Even though he knew that he should put an end to leaving her hanging by giving her a ‘no’ already, but he just couldn’t... She was just left with his words of, “Without Asuna, I haven’t truly returned from Aincrad.”

Maybe it was because he was feeling really guilty as there was a time long ago when he really wanted for her to be his sweetheart... But it could never be, as he had later learned that it was frowned upon with disgust by the society, not to mention it being illegal...

So, giving into despair, he eventually left kendo, spending most of his time playing computer games, running away from reality as he slowly distanced himself from his sister.

Until that day when he was just ten years old came to pass... He was watching a movie on the internet about a child who by chance learns that his parents were not his real biological parents so he eventually sets out on a journey with his friends to find his real parents, which lead Kazuto to suspect about his origins.

So it was both a relieving and depressing news for him when he discovered from erased Juki Net records that he was actually adopted by his relatives who had taken him in after a traffic accident that had costed his parent’s lives.

Relieved in the knowledge that he was not an abnormal child like he had thought he was for a long time; depressed in that he felt that he shouldn’t have left Sugu alone, he didn’t know what to do as he had downright failed her...

But overall, it was good news for him as at the time, he was in a depression, thinking he was a disgusting and lonely human being who ‘lusted’ after his own family... Because not only was he attracted to his ‘sister’, but his ‘mother’ as well. Seeing her in revealing clothes really made his heart beat... This fact was more than enough to make him jealous of his father while at the same time, feel ‘terribly guilty’ about it, to the point of struggling to even look at his ‘father’s’ face when they were in the same room...

Even one time, after he accidentally ‘saw’ his mother changing in her room, he felt really bad about himself, wanting to turn the time back and forget even seeing her mother naked... He even wanted to confess to his mother that he was a good-for-nothing son... But he couldn’t... He didn’t want his mother to be disgusted of him, just like him who was disgusted with himself...

The dark feelings of guilt and self-hatred intensified for the little one as time went by... Feeling hopeless and powerless as he couldn’t even fix his relationship with his sister even though he had already found out that she was actually his cousin, which in itself was even more disheartening for him than learning that his parents who he’d never ‘met’ were actually dead...

All of it was just too much for the little boy to handle all by himself as he was all alone, with no one to understand him...

His ‘mother’ who was actually his aunt certainly cared for him, this he didn’t doubt a bit, but sadly, it was not that of a mother’s love... And the reality that she spent very little time with him because of her job didn’t help much to their bond as mother and son either... So it was no wonder that he didn’t consider her as a mother-figure like a normal child would do...

He needed an escape, and so he founded it in the form of MMORPG, massive multiple online role-playing games, which became his top priority from then on... There, he could be an anonymous player with a name of his choosing... There he was Kirito, a solo player who made quite the name for himself as he would later be acknowledged as a veteran player, distinguished from the others....

So with each passing day, with his ‘family’ none the wiser, the person known as Kazuto slowly faded away, along with the colours that he was born with, while Kirito, his ‘character’ clad in black took his place more and more, especially after the nerve-gear entered his life...

All of that had changed however, after he had found himself trapped inside the game that he had begun considering as his reality in his six months of Beta-Testing experience...

Ironically, for the first time in a very long time, he truly felt motivated to ‘return’ back to the ‘real world’ and once and for all, set things right with his ‘sister’...

Later he even joined a guild, Moonlit Black Cats which was a mid-level guild with relatively few players who knew each other offline as they were members of a school’s computer club...

They were a friendly bunch, inviting him after his help in some quest, which he accepted, going against his solo history...

But ‘unfortunately’, things didn’t go the way he had ‘hoped’. One day loosing everyone from his guild because of him...

It was because of him... If he had only told them his real level... If he had only warned them of a possible trap with a no teleportation zone in that dungeon, then they wouldn’t have had to die. He killed them... All of them... If only, if only he could turn time back...

But he should already know from experience, he wasn’t the possessor of such a ‘fantastical’ power.

Even Sachi, the girl he had fancied in his guild, who also liked him as they both seemed to hit it off quite well from the start.... He killed her as well... She even left an item which contained a message for him just in case... Just in case she dies during a mission...

Her singing voice was still not lost to his ears even till this day... The voice that gave him power to go on, against all odds... The voice that, for a long time was with him in his darkest hours... The voice that taught him what love really was... And the voice that led him to his true love, Asuna...

Asuna... She was the one... She was the one who became such an existence to him... An existence who he considered to be his destiny... In such a short amount of time, not only had she become his ‘wife’, but also his ‘mother’ as well...

For him who had grown up devoid of a mother’s love, Asuna was just the person, with her high maternal instincts, she was able to be the mother that he never had, even though neither of them were in any way conscious of it...

One might even argue that, through Asuna, he had even managed to reconcile his need for a mother from growing up without one, with his need for a life partner which he learned the importance of from Sachi...

So he certainly would not betray a woman like her...

Asuna worried about him just like a mother would for her son and she cherished him just like a wife would for her husband...

Such a woman, truly was irreplaceable for Kirito... This, he will never forget...

“Pwaah!”

An alert Kirito quickly rose out of the hot water, breathless as he was, he didn’t neglect to take in his surroundings, only to be completely baffled by the scene right in front of him.

Right in front of him, a naked Asuna was holding a female sylph by the collar parallel to the water, who somewhat very much ‘resembled’ his sister’s avatar seen from the back. But that was not all. What was the most baffling for the two naked High-Sylphs was that the sylph in question’s blushing face was just centimeters away from his ‘proudly standing member’...

“Kyaaaaaaa!”