Secrets of the Foolishly Honest
A/N: Just clearing out my backlog. Any feeback is appreciated.
Even honest people have secrets.
"Honesty" to Kanzaki Nao, who wears her mantle of "foolishly honest" with acceptance if not outright pride, and absorbs those words into her identity, does not always mean telling the truth, and especially does not mean telling all one knows.
Honesty means trusting, and being worthy of trust. And being worthy of trust sometimes does mean being discreet.
Nao has never told a lie to save herself. No matter how late she might have spent out with her friends, she never pretended once that she spent the whole time studying for her high school entrance exams. She's never accidentally broken a dish or a vase careening through the house and then blamed the neighbor's dog, who somehow managed to sneak in through the back gate (which she would have never left open) and cause the chaos.
And she's never told a lie to hurt someone. She still can't quite believe any person can be capable of that, even after all she has gone through. She imagines the level of pain of sheer patheticness that must exist inside a person to need to use dishonesty to hurt others.
And mostly, she does prefer to keep the information lines between herself and her acquaintances open. Life, and her recent experiences with The Game (which is how she's started to think about it), only prove that more and more, sometimes people just need to let go of this need to cover up and bury and hide their true intentions. Sometimes, they simply need to trust.
But still, even Nao keeps a myriad of secrets.
There are the secrets that hurt.
More and more, Nao's smile becomes her mask while she visits with her father.
When this whole ordeal began, Nao imagined that for better or worse, everything would be over in a month, and so, she never spoke a single word about that invitation, that lawyer, or that box of cash she had to take care of.
She thought, no matter what, no matter how wise the advice he gave, all the good in telling him would be erased by the distress he felt.
Fathers always want to protect their daughters, her father especially. Nao realizes, looking back, how much he sheltered her from the more unsavory side of the world. All the situations he silently stepped in and altered so that Nao could go just one more day or one more year as the innocent, without being burned by others.
Nao hid the truth out of love, that sincere desire that her father's last days be happy ones. What was the harm, she thought, in letting an ailing man believe that he'll leave the world with his daughter safe and happy and starting a new life?
Pu rururu. Pu rururu.
Akiyama's message comes at an inconvenient time.
"Who's that?" Kanzaki Tadashi asks from his bed. His voice crackles and fades.
"Oh," Nao says with a grin, "probably just a friend of mine. I'll contact them later."
He smiles and sinks back into his pillow, but who knows what those eyes of his catch? "I'm glad to see that you're making friends."
And that's what hurts. One day, perhaps sooner than she'll ever be ready for, Nao will find herself in one of two situations. She'll slip, and her father will find out about the Liar Game, and Nao's ever deepening involvement in it. That she's been carrying this weight all this time. Lying to him, keeping this secret from him. She doesn't fear his anger, but his inevitable disappointment when he finds out that his honest daughter has hidden something so important from him for so long.
The shadow of The Game stretches over months now, and still there's no ending in sight. Real Rounds, Revival Rounds, Preliminaries, it seems like the tournament just piles battles on top of new battles. Then, at the same time, her father's condition worsens day by day. He might, with a combination of luck and perseverance, make it to New Years or perhaps a bit later, but it's fall already. Soon time will run out.
Nao thinks of the other situation, the one that might be worse than seeing his disappointment. He might go to his grave never knowing that his daughter carried such a huge burden. Nao laughs bitterly whenever she thinks of it. It's a selfish feeling, one she needs to burn out of her veins. No benefit comes to anyone through the small lightening of that weight. Not to him. Not even to Nao herself.
Every time she looks at her father, smiling as Nao remains the dutiful daughter, taking care of him on his sick bed, that secret looms over her. It curdles her insides, knowing that to reveal or to hide, it would only be to cause pain.
Then, there are the secrets that sing.
Nao doesn't know the exact moment when It happened (another word that seems to merit capitalization in her mind). It seems, once upon a time, Akiyama was merely her savior, a sure thing that kept her sane and out of debt as The Game threatened to take the world from beneath her.
But now he's...he's...
She gazes at him, sitting across from her on the bus home, chin resting on his hand, and eyes gazing out the window or what would be a window if it weren't covered in black cloth. Certainly, he's not as tense as he was before the game.
How could she have ever thought him frightening?
She knows how. Akiyama proves well enough that despite his natural kindness (and oh, Nao sees that in him even if he doesn't) that he's got a stubborn, ruthless streak in him too. One day, she might have to stand up to him, tell him that he can't destroy himself because she won't allow it (her heart's resolution). She dreads becoming his enemy, but not enough to see him come to harm.
When did he become handsome, even when he wears old clothes and remains in perpetual need of a haircut?
Nao's had crushes before, little frothy bits and pieces of feelings that she had for the class representative or the president of the kendo club (well, all her friends liked him; Nao actually preferred the quieter and more thoughtful vice president). This though...
This transcends a crush.
She always thought she understood what falling in love would feel like. Her heart would speed up, and she'd maybe get dizzy a little bit. No. Not even close. Well, her pulse does speed up whenever he touches her. How a mere hand on her shoulder or arm can feel so electric, she's not quite sure.
So close, maybe, but inadequate.
If this feeling of hers, that threatens to expand and collapse her heart at the same time, that Nao must keep secret. Just her knowing it, that she'd be infinitely happy to see him smile just once, is enough to keep that warm glow alive.
Akiyama looks up and appears to notice her. "Something wrong?"
"Oh? No. Nothing." Nao looks away. How could she have been caught gazing at him, again?
He keeps looking at her, with those intelligent brown eyes of his. Akiyama's a student of human psychology, right. Or was anyway. What if he's reading her mind, digging through the pages of love letters that she's mentally written to him?
She turns away, embarrassed by the heat touching her cheeks.
Maybe one day, she'll tell.
One day The Game will end and she and Akiyama will be free to leave behind the tricks and the betrayals. Nao believes in that. Who can know what will happen after, if the feeling inside her will be granted? But one day, she'll tell Akiyama this secret that's sustaining her.
How will he take it?
Nao ponders this possibility. She's long given up on understanding everything that goes through his head. Not apathy, just acceptance that many of his thoughts go beyond her level, and that most of the rest, he seems to prefer to keep private. His heart, though, is a different matter. She sorts through the running index of his actions, trying to understand what lies beneath his still surface.
What is it about him that has captured her so completely?
"You sure nothing's wrong?"
Oh. She's staring again. "Just thinking, I guess. You know, Akiyama-san?"
"What?"
"I'm really glad to have met you."
That's as much as she can say for now.
His face remains as expressionless as a statue. "I see." And there it is, he cracks just the smallest of smiles. "I don't regret getting involved with you."
Was that...? Did he...? Nao turns and focuses on him with a wide-eyed, innocent intensity, and he stares right back at her, with that faint smirk. What's going on behind his eyes? She wonders, feeling a warm blush spreading across her cheeks.
"Akiyama-san..."
He gets stern again. "Not now. When this is over."
Right.
One day, she'll definitely tell.