AFTERMATH: HACK
Part 2 – The Never-Ending Tale

Chapter 21 – Eyes
Yuusaku

.

A week passes like a breeze. His parents usher him in and wrap him in blankets and warmth and, when he offers them little, they give back chatter about their lives. His mother still teaches art at the local high school and his father's bounced through several retailers before settling into an old-fashioned games shop. There are several board games set up in the house and he's not sure why, because it's only his parents.

For a moment, he thought he might have missed a younger sibling but that doesn't appear to be the case. Nor have any guests come by in the week he's been here. But there's the shadow of something or someone there. He wonders if that's his shadow, that his parents took with them when he refused to come.

Some are games that can be played with two people. Most ask for at least three, if not more.

And when they ask if he wants to play, he shrugs. Why not? They're not digital. They're not duelling, even though duels can be played on mats. If anything, the closest thing he's done before is solve Ai's puzzle to find the Cyverse cards: his deck, still sitting in his duel disc after that final duel.

If he fades out in the middle of playing, in the middle of talking, in the middle of eating his parents' warm home cooked meals, they say nothing.

Perhaps they know that, eventually, the words will spill out. Or perhaps they're afraid he'll disappear again if they push.

But because they don't know, they don't judge. Or, else, they know just enough. And he gets a feel for what they know and what they don't, in the way they talk, or shy away from certain topics, in the way there's Playmaker memorabilia tucked away with family pictures, with how his recent school picture has somehow made its way onto the mantle as well. Like how there is a duel mat and a tin of cards amongst all the other board games in the house, and what even looks like a few of his old cards when curiosity bids him to have a closer look at them.

He has them spread out still when his mother comes home. She smiles when she sees him at the table: a strange, bittersweet smile.

"Games are strange things, aren't they?" she comments, turning away again. She goes into the kitchen. Puts a kettle on to boil, from the sounds of it.

That's another thing he's realised… or maybe he'd just forgotten it. Neither of his parents seem to drink coffee. They keep very little of it in the house. They drink teas instead: a vast array of teas and they all taste soft and sweet in the aftermath of Kusanagi's coffee.

"Strange in what way?" he asks, because yes, they are strange in how different they are but how they all seem to function to bring people closer together.

"Just like that," she replies, and maybe he is talking out loud, or else she knows him that well despite five years apart. "I thought it was odd, at first, that they chose duel monsters, but now… not so much. But that doesn't make it any less cruel."

Her eyes are dark and moist, and the same shade of green as his own, that he'd kept for his avatar. It had been a foolish move in retrospect and he'd had to work that much harder to cover the similarities, to make sure no-one looked too closely at him – but still, the Zaizen siblings had known immediately, when they saw him with Kusanagi.

Kusanagi also hadn't thought to hide his own appearance… or maybe he couldn't. That would have undermined the trap they'd sprung.

Maybe it was the way the world said that enough was enough.

"Oh, Yuu-chan." She sets two cups of tea – chamomile again; he recognises the smell – on the table, and then embraces him again. He's getting somewhat used to this. His mother's always been tactile but she held back, after the Lost Incident, like he was made of glass. And they'd never bridged that gap.

Time, it seems, bridged that gap for him, for them.

"We watched," she continues, "your father and I. "We knew the moment you refused to leave Den City that you would search high and low for answers and you wouldn't stop until you got them. We could only hope you wouldn't get yourself into trouble along the way. And then we saw you on the broadcasts in Link VRAINS. Saw you fighting the Knights of Hanoi with such vehemence they must have had something to do with it. And saw you fight that man – that entertainer – who seemed to just want a strong fight, and I thought for a moment you might have been enjoying it again…" The tears spilled over. "But you fought that girl and it was ruined. And all the fights afterwards, I don't think I saw that smile of yours again. And how many did we miss?"

"I don't know," he replies, because he doesn't know which duels were broadcasted and which weren't. He only knows Kusanagi combed the internet with a fine tooth comb to delete all the recorded data, anything that could hint to his identity. That didn't stop people's memories and reconstruction, though. That didn't stop the people chatting about him, or creating their own memorabilia: a mix of fairly close to his original avatar to nowhere near. That didn't stop people trying to imitate him as well, but at least they'd gotten the idea it was pretty dangerous by the time he had a bounty over his head.

And he can think about all that a little more easily now. It's the unfamiliar environment, he thinks. It's being surrounded by his parents, and this new life they've built and the space they've left for him, and the way they seem to be in the house even when they're away. It's the almost comforting feeling of being watched over, looked after, that he'd lost when he lost Ai and Roboppy, and that he'd taken for granted until then.

It's the distance. It's the time. It's the slightly unsettled feeling of being in a new bed that's keeping the dreams away at night. But how long will that last, he wonders? How long before the cracks grow into fissures and break him apart?

His mother tilts her head at him. Her hair is still in a plait, still wound and tied at the end by a ribbon, and the whole thing tumbles off her shoulder when she does. It makes her face look smaller, somehow. Softer. "SOL Technologies is getting back on its feet, and you're here," she says. "That means the door to the past has closed, so to speak."

"Has closed," Yuusaku repeats, and that's a good way of saying it because he didn't intend at all to close the door himself, not in the way it shut.

And now that it's gotten this far, he has to say it, even if the air seems to get heavier in anticipation, even if his mouth dries and something in his chest twists and cracks and lets out a flood of emptiness again.

"They created Ignis: beings with artificial intelligence meant to replace humanity. Six for six children they kidnapped and forced to duel, and mine became my partner this year as we fought Hanoi and SOL Technologies and other Ignis."

Her brow furrows as she processes that. "That little black thing that was in your duel disk?" she asks. "That programme from SOL Technologies that they cited as the reason for having a bounty on your head?"

He nods. His fists tighten. His knuckles whiten.

"Created from your pain, your fear, your suffering," she continues, and she sounds like his old psychiatrist then, except there'd been nothing tangible back then. "Created, also, from that inner strength you'd held on to, and your love."

"My love," he repeats, and he's not sure about that.

But she is. "You would cry in your sleep," she explains. "And you did tell us a bit. That boy you said hadn't been rescued by the others. That boy you'd met, that had offered you hope when you thought you'd had none. That boy we're forever thankful for."

Ah, he hasn't told her yet that the boy in question is Revolver. Maybe she doesn't even need to know.

"And, I hoped, the family you wanted to come back to. But then you stayed and I wasn't sure – " She wrings her fingers together. Their cups grow cold. "But you came back."

"I gained closure and lost it before I came back," he replies, but maybe – for the first time, he thinks – maybe it had to happen that way. "The only thing I could cling to was answers, was revenge – and then one thing led to another and led to us saving Link VRAINS, fighting for a world where one species doesn't need to eliminate the other… and in the end I eliminate Ai with my own hands."

"Ai," she repeats. "Ai means love."

But he hadn't chose that name because of its meaning. He'd chosen it because of its pronunciation.

"Does it matter?" she asks. "Our subconsciousness play a greater role in our decisions than you might think. But it doesn't sound to me like you intended to eliminate him."

She uses the same word as him.

"I didn't," he admits, and here he can talk to someone who won't judge, who won't say he had to do it. "I was backed into a corner. I thought I could have found another way but Ai outmanoeuvred me. He's been doing that all along."

"Why?" And now her voice is sharp. A mother's scorn, he reflects with some surprise – and he's not sure why he's surprised. He heard that before, when he'd woken up in the hospital, when the police weren't able to give a satisfactory explanation, when they eventually abandoned the case altogether.

And why indeed? Hasn't Yuusaku been asking the same question himself? Hasn't the same question clung to his head, his heart, and he's dragged it along with him.

But now that it's his mother asking, he thinks he knows. Ai who initially fought for humanity, who gave up the other Ignis to fight for humanity, who made the mistake of looking into the future, of simulating the possibilities and coming up short…

"He says he did it to save me. But he gave up on hope."

Because humans don't know probabilities, don't know what the future holds, and can cling to what others would call a fool's hope.

His mother's face softens again. She unwinds her hands: reaches out, and takes one of his in both her own. "Then what will you do you with that sacrifice?"

And that's not the way he's been asking himself that question, but maybe he should. What will he do now that Ai is gone, is what he's said. What will he do now that he's closed the door to his future with his own hands… But this is different. This is a responsibility he bears, and someone who wasn't able to find hope, who's offered it to him instead.

"I'll find a solution," he replies, and this time his voice is firm. He remembers how brittle it became when arguing with Ai, when arguing with Bohman, and now… It only takes finding conviction to change that, to give him back a stage to stand on.

He's always been a performer. He knows that, knew that when he crafted Playmaker and the quiet unassuming student who rubbed Naoki Shiima the wrong way.

Though that didn't succeed in getting him off his back, for some reason.

But neither Playmaker nor Fujiku Yuusaku are great at socialising, even if they're good at reading people through duels.

"I'll find a way for humans and artificial intelligence to live together." Because they're all hypocrites. He knows this. Others just avert their eyes to it. They depend on computers. On the network. On data and machines and stored information and calculations they can't do or are much slower at themselves. Even people who claim to despise them like Blood Shephard… He was lying the moment he stepped into Link VRAINS and who knows how long before that. But they live alongside a virtual world with or without Link VRAINS and he'll learn to navigate it, to understand it, and to ensure humans don't self-destruct with it. Because that was what he planned to do with Ai, for Ai –

And just because Ai isn't here, doesn't mean he should give up on it.

His mother is smiling again, but this time it's bittersweet. "You'll always have a home with us," she says, as though it's a foregone conclusion he'll leave.

Maybe it is, but right now he has no intention to go and he says as much. Still, she takes their teas and reheats them, takes that soft but striking gaze along with her –

And there's still something, someone, some sensation and he doesn't understand it until he sees his duel disc, lying innocently on its side.

But it can't be, can it?

He's seen Ai everywhere in Den City, though. Why not in the duel disc that was his home?