A/N: My laptop has betrayed me again, so I had to fetch this chapter from a saved email draft and trust that I haven't edited it too much since late December, but that's how determined I am to share it with you all today! The upside is that while making use of my desktop computer, I rediscovered ZenWriter. Truly a godsend for a writer like me who gets easily distracted (though it could also be the lessened amount of tabs open). Anyway, thanks to ZainR and Seiram for the reviews!
ZainR: I echo your sentiment but I'm glad you didn't leave it at that! I enjoyed reading all your reactions! And I'm sure Naoi feels your frustration there, it was a terrible time for the lines to be tied up. Doesn't help that the Naoi estate is cut off from the rest of town the way it is, out of earshot, or someone at least might've heard something. But your question(s) should be answered in this chapter! As for the Ayame ending, I gave it a lot of thought and even considered a coma instead, but ultimately I realized her fate was too set in stone. I just hoped to find a way to do right by her anyway (you'll see what I mean). Thanks again!
Seiram: For real, he's the only canon (?) AB character I truly loathe. The reason Naoi was inclined to beat up NPCs and flinch at aggressive hugs. I saw in Kimito a man who was losing control and would one day finally snap. (If only Ayame had left before he did.) I'm glad the chapter managed to give you some light and hope though! You have no idea how much I wanted to have them kiss right there in the car. Curse all these almost-kisses! Thanks to that apology, at least, there are more NaYuri moments where that came from. Also, you will learn who they called soon! (tbh I haven't read TPS in a while either ^^) Thank you for honoring Ayame (a character who deserved more than what Jun Maeda or I gave her) and for your kind words!
I'm well into Chapter 61, but the Akuma arc isn't as solidly planned as previous arcs so I'm going to be careful about how soon I send out its chapters. Don't want to end up having to retcon things. But writing is happening! That's what's important. Never felt this close to the end before. I'd say this fic is 75-80% done. Kind of wild to think about.
Hope you enjoy!
[Chapter 58]: Aftermath
The shrill metallic wail dissolved into a rhythmic muted beep, and it took Ayato a moment to realize the sound was coming from outside himself.
His pounding headache had gone, but a grogginess replaced it as he opened his bleary eyes – and immediately closed them with a groan. Too much light.
He tried again, blinking and squinting to adjust to it. It was a sterile white brightness, turned up to eleven. His surroundings smelled of lemon and bleach and hand sanitizer, so he figured out where he was before his vision cleared. For a visceral moment he thought he was ten years old again, and the silhouette in his peripheral vision...
From his right, there came a soft gasp. He turned his head toward it in time to see Yuri stop in mid-text and let her phone fall from her hand.
"You're awake," she said, looking heavily relieved as she sprang up from her chair by the window. She pulled the chair closer to his bedside but didn't sit back down, hovering over him with a kind of protective uncertainty.
He tried to push himself into a sitting position. Yuri's warning touch came too late and he grimaced at a pain in his side, giving up and falling back on the bed.
"What happened…?" he asked, his voice gravelly in his raw throat.
Yuri sat down next to him. "Well, after—" she hesitated, then began again, "after I caught up to you at the bridge, you passed out in my arms, and I was trying to wake you up and I realized you were bleeding, and…" She narrowed her eyes with a half-hearted scoff. "Moron, why would you run away from the medics if you knew you'd been hurt?"
Surprised, Ayato felt the spot that had pained him earlier. Beneath his hospital gown, there was a considerable line of stitches running along his lower abdomen. "I guess I didn't notice…"
"Heat of the moment, right," Yuri considered. "It was more of a cut than a stab and it didn't hit anything serious. But you weren't waking up, and they saw signs of strangulation, and there was a lot of blood, so they brought you in to stitch you up and make sure everything else was okay. Couldn't find any signs of brain injury so they decided you must've just passed out from shock."
He caught her knowing look, and glanced away with a scornful snort. She reached out and touched his arm.
"I told you not to hypnotize anyone else tonight," she said softly.
"He deserved it," Ayato retorted. Noticing her other hand, he grasped for it and examined it in his own. Her palm had been stitched and wrapped in bandages but some red had seeped through. He scowled in disgust. "Look what he did to your hand! The bastard should rot in his cell…"
Yuri winced suddenly, and he loosened his grip in guilt.
"Anyway, that must make it hard to text," he muttered, changing the subject with a lift of his brow.
"Yeah, for the past fifteen minutes or so I was trying to finally get back to some of the guys," Yuri explained. "You know, 'where the hell are you' texts… We did kind of vanish without any explanation." Her phone buzzed precariously on top of her purse. "That's probably Ooyama. He was really worried, he texted back a minute after I did. Kept asking if he should get Fujimaki to turn around and meet us here." The phone buzzed again, and Yuri managed a weak smile. "Yep, definitely Ooyama."
Ayato sighed, letting go of her hand and closing his eyes for a moment as his head sunk deeper into the pillow.
"Is everyone filled in on it, then?" he asked, opening them again to stare blankly at the ceiling. "My mother's dead and my father's in jail?"
"Naoi…"
"What? It's true." His fists clenched the sheets of the hospital bed. "Isn't that a good way to sum up this catastrophe of a night? He killed her for leaving and now he gets to live the rest of his days in prison? Tell me I'm wrong, I would be glad to be wrong—"
"Naoi, your dad's not in prison," Yuri said.
Ayato turned his head sharply, searching her face for the truth. "What do you mean he's not in prison—" He scrambled into a sitting position, only to hold his side in agony. "Ow!"
"Don't!" she scolded, reaching out again to make him lie back.
He obediently settled against the back of the bed at the sensation of her gauze-wrapped hand grazing against his wound, but looked up at her in disbelief. Her red-rimmed eyes indicated she had been crying fairly recently, so how long had he been out? Long enough for Kimito to weasel his way out of trouble, apparently!
"How the hell did he get out of this?" he croaked, his mind racing again. "Didn't they take him away? You'd think a dead body would proof enough to—" Panicking, he gripped the bedrail. "What, do they think it was me? They think that I—"
"Naoi!" Yuri squeezed his arm with her uninjured hand. "It's not that. It's nothing like that. I need you to calm down before I tell you this, okay?"
Ayato didn't like the sound of that, but took a breath anyway and nodded. In the silence, the beeping on his monitor slowed.
Closing her eyes for a moment, Yuri released her own slow breath before opening them.
"After you passed out… I saw you were injured, I yelled for help, they did what they could there and then brought us back to the scene so they could get you into the ambulance," she recapped. "When we got back there, two things were going on. Your mother… your mother was carried out of the workshop on a stretcher, they said she was still clinging to life." Her voice cracked, and Ayato blinked, his mouth falling open as he tilted his head at her questioningly. "And your father was… he was still on the ground."
Ayato stared some more. Multiple questions bounced around in his head but he couldn't bring himself to voice a single one of them.
"The police said when they tried to get him up, he was unresponsive." He must've given her a look, because she gave a slight nod like she could hear his thoughts. "I know, that's what I thought too, but… but his heart had stopped and he wasn't breathing." She paused, chewing on the inside of her mouth, before meeting his eyes. "Naoi, your father had a heart attack. They revived him long enough to load him into the ambulance, and then he coded on the way to the hospital. They said he was dead on arrival."
His breath hitched and slowed, sinking heavily in his throat as he attempted to process this. It was as if he'd never heard the word before, it echoed so many times in his mind that it lost all meaning, and he shifted to a different thought.
"And," he swallowed hard, "and my mother, you said she was clinging to life?"
Yuri's features softened with an emotion he couldn't quite read.
"'Surprisingly tenacious,' they called her," she said fondly. "She played dead until he left the workshop, then managed to stop the bleeding with some tape before she passed out." Noticing the way his expression changed, she pursed her lips and lowered her eyes for a moment. "She made it to the hospital, but her injuries were pretty bad. Still, they were able to ease the pain and make her comfortable." Her voice quavered, but she managed to lift her gaze back up to meet his. Her eyes shimmered with tears. "She lived for about twenty-six more minutes. We were able to talk for a while and say goodbye. I let her know you were going to be okay, but… I wish I'd tried to wake you up or something, I'm sorry—"
"Yuri." Ayato touched her hand, swallowing past the lump in his throat. Gratitude and a dozen other emotions stung at the corner of his eyes. "Thank you. Thank you being there for her."
A tiny, choked sob escaped her lips before she could muffle it, and she laughed bitterly as she wiped at her eyes.
Twenty-six minutes… Through the mist of grief and disbelief, a sliver of satisfaction crept across his lips. "She outlived him," he murmured to himself, mildly floored, and managed a chuckling scoff. "'The Naoi men have always had weak hearts…'"
Yuri gave his hand a gentle squeeze, causing him to look up. "Not all of them," she said softly.
He held her gaze in that moment, feeling the weight of all that had happened. This was the woman who had offered him a ride, who'd raced to Akuma with him, who'd fought off his father and held him at the bridge. The woman who'd stayed with his mother in her final moments, and been at his bedside when he woke up.
I'm going to marry you, Yuri Nakamura, he thought. And suddenly that thought felt strikingly familiar.
Pouring rain. Pounding headache. The roar of the river.
"Yuri."
"Hm?"
"Will you marry me?"
Stunned by the memory, his eyes widened and he fought back a blush, fervently hoping it had been a hallucination after all. A trick of his mind, borne of hypnotism overload.
Because at a time like that, nobody in their right mind would actually...
The doctor came in, interrupting his thoughts, and checked on him while recounting basically what Yuri had already told him. Superficial wound, didn't hit any arteries, contusions along his throat but no real damage, must have passed out from shock, and so on and so forth.
"…but I'm sure your fiancée already told you all of this," he said casually, earning him a startled blink from Ayato. "Anyway, the prolonged unconsciousness was a little concerning, but your vitals are good and there are no signs of concussion or brain injury, so…"
Ayato glanced at Yuri while the doctor was droning about discharging versus keeping him overnight. "Fiancée?" he repeated under his breath.
"They asked if I was family and I wasn't sure if they'd let me stay in the room otherwise," Yuri hissed back. "Besides, technically you did propose to me tonight."
"Technically the title of fiancée depends on the answer, not the question," he pointed out.
Yuri cast him an odd look, then abruptly turned back to the doctor. "Yes, that sounds fine!" she chirped, paying rapt attention to him.
"Excellent, then I think that covers everything," the doctor replied obliviously, and turned his back for a moment as he carried on while looking over the chart in his hand.
Eyebrows furrowed, Ayato peered at her. "Wait, did you say yes?"
"Just now? Yes."
"No, I mean when I…" he trailed off uncertainly.
"If anyone here asks, I did." Yuri picked up her phone as it buzzed and nonchalantly checked her messages.
Ayato quirked his mouth and fell back against the pillows. That sounded like her dodging the question, but he decided not to press the issue. It wasn't that important anyway. What did it matter what her answer was to a proposal like that? Under the circumstances…
"Alright then." The doctor opened the door and began to step out, but looked back at them. "By the way, you have a visitor."
Yuri looked up from her phone, surprised. "This late?"
"It can't be someone from Battlefront…" Ayato muttered, utterly exhausted at the thought of dealing with that right now. "Could Fujimaki and Ooyama get here that fast?"
"No, I already told them to just drop Yusa off at home and go to bed, and not worry about us till the morning." Yuri cupped her chin in her hand. "I hope for your sake it's not one of the officers coming in for a police report or something. They already got your mother's side of the story and mine in the last hour or so."
The doctor smiled apologetically. "I understand it's late, but he was rather insistent. Should I send him in?"
Ayato and Yuri exchanged a glance, then the former gave a weary sigh. He didn't want to relive anything right now, but something inside was urging him to. "Might as well get it out of the way."
Nodding, the doctor stepped out, and Ayato began kneading his temples in preparation with a groan.
"Hey, it'll be fine," Yuri said. Then, more tentatively, "How much do you remember, anyway?"
"Everything up to when I proposed and passed out." He stared up at the ceiling and pushed back his hair to his scalp, rolling his eyes at himself. With an answer like that, it sounded like he was talking about a wild party instead of a serious and devastating domestic disturbance at his childhood home.
"I see." Yuri let silence hang between them for a moment, but he felt her eyes linger on him. "How's your head?"
"Better, but I'm not looking forward to an interrogation," Ayato said, releasing a slow exhale. "And no more hypnotism for a while."
"Yeah, that's probably for the best…" Yuri agreed. Her eyes fell lower. "What about your throat? That looks really painful."
He rubbed at his neck self-consciously. "It's not so bad. Still kind of raw but at least I can talk."
"All the same," Yuri heaved a dismayed sigh, and to his surprise, ran her fingertips along the bruises, "why is everyone trying to strangle you…?"
Flummoxed, Ayato tried not to wince or shiver at her touch. Not even when her fingers grazed his own. He almost said he was astonished she didn't already have a smart answer for that, but somehow he managed to wisely keep that to himself.
"I had to see it to believe it," came a voice from the doorway.
Recognizing the voice, Ayato's and Yuri's eyes widened as they simultaneously flicked their attention to the door, where a tall, wiry man with purple hair and normally stern-looking gold eyes stood regarding them warmly.
"Masuda!" Yuri breathed out in a gasp. Beaming as she leapt to her feet, she hurried across the room and engulfed him in a giant hug. Eisuke Masuda wrapped his arms around her and squeezed her back, looking rather emotional himself. Then he glanced over her shoulder at Ayato, released her, and strode over to his bedside.
"Thank goodness you're both alright," Masuda said, his expression a mixture of relief and sympathy as he unconsciously patted his pocket where his phone was. "I came as soon as I heard. When I saw the missed call from you, I immediately sensed something had happened, and then a friend down at the station called and told me there'd been an incident at the estate, and that everyone had been taken here, and…" He exhaled slowly, running a hand through his hair. "Naoi, I'm truly sorry. If I had just—"
"No, don't put that on yourself," Ayato said firmly, as Yuri came around the other side of the bed. "This wasn't your fault."
"Still, it feels like I could've done more." Masuda averted his eyes, mouth twitching with regret. "Visiting your father's shop recently… he seemed more agitated than usual, the signs were there. I didn't miss all of them. I tried to hint to her that she could come to me for help, but…"
Ayato harrumphed into his lap. "It's not like you could've wedged your card into her hand."
"Anyway, you weren't the only one we had trouble reaching," Yuri added.
A scoff from Masuda. "Yes, I can imagine. Power outage. Apparently quite a few people called in later crabby about it." He shrugged. "But when you're already in the middle of 'late night couple's tech-free time,' it simply adds to the ambience."
Ayato raised an eyebrow. "Late night couple's tech-free time?"
"Kid in bed, phones off, mostly just talking and powering down together for half an hour." Masuda rubbed the back of his neck abashedly. "The title's a work in progress – anyway, it's not important right now. Are the two of you okay? I heard you passed out, and…" His gaze shifted. "Yuri, your hand. Did something happen?"
"Oh – this?" Yuri massaged her bandaged hand. "It's nothing, it just got a little cut up when I was trying to disarm his father. I did hit my head pretty hard—" Ayato looked at her in concern, recalling the moment of impact with dread, "but I'm not concussed or anything. And Naoi's abdominal wound was a superficial one, they think he mainly passed out from shock. They stitched him up though so he'll be fine…" She trailed off, catching the peculiar look Masuda was giving her. "What, what's wrong?"
"Nothing, except…" His brow furrowed before lifting with curiosity. "You called him Naoi instead of Ayato just now."
Blinking twice, Yuri reddened in sudden realization. "Oh, that's—" she squeaked, then cleared her throat and composed herself. "Hey, I told you I hit my head."
Masuda considered her for a moment, then gave a small nod of acceptance.
"Well, you've both been through a lot tonight," he said. "If there's anything I can do for you… Are they keeping you here overnight?"
"Not necessarily. The doctor said unless we'd like to have them monitor him overnight as a precaution, we're basically good to go." Yuri turned a sigh into a yawn. "But it's pretty late and I'd rather not have to bother with finding a hotel."
"Then, why don't you stay at our place tonight?" Masuda suggested.
Ayato and Yuri looked at each other, then back at him. "Are you sure? I hope it's not any trouble..."
"No trouble at all, it's the least I can do." He reached into his pocket for his phone. "I'd just have to get the 'okay' at home, but considering the circumstances I'm sure that'll be the easiest 'okay' in the world."
Ayato nodded, and Masuda stepped outside to make the call. Yuri's phone buzzed on the seat of the chair beside him, lighting up with Otonashi's name while the heart monitor continued its steady beep.
Tiredly, he thought to himself: Welcome back to Akuma.
They left the hospital in Masuda's car, electing to pick Yuri's up in the morning. It wasn't a long drive from his home but by that time Yuri and Ayato were both so exhausted they could barely keep their eyes open.
Quietly Masuda unlocked his front door and let the two of them inside. They stepped out of their shoes and made their way in, letting him go around them to get the lights. Upon reaching the staircase, he raised a finger to his lips. "Let's try not to wake the girls."
They softened their footsteps and followed him in his stealthy ascent upstairs. Finally he stopped in the hallway and opened the door to the guestroom.
"We're expecting company sometime tomorrow, but I don't know if they'll be staying here overnight, so don't worry about anything for now," he said, turning on the light. "Just try to get some rest and we'll talk more in the morning. Let me know if there's anything you need."
Yuri nodded, and Ayato managed as well. "Okay. Thank you."
As Masuda turned and headed down the hall, Yuri entered the room first. Ayato trudged in after her, his body still heavy and worn-out from tonight. Or last night. Going by the clock on the end table. The numbers fuzzed out of focus as his vision fogged with fatigue. He felt ready to collapse again. A bed had never looked so comfortable…
Then he looked at Yuri just standing there staring at it, and it occurred to him what the dilemma was here.
"Only one bed," she muttered, voicing his thoughts.
Ayato was about to go back out there and intercept Masuda, but before he'd taken two steps toward the hall, they both heard the bedroom door shut. Ayato closed his eyes, retreating and feeling more tired than ever. "We neglected to mention we aren't married anymore."
Yuri sighed. "Well, it's a bit late for that conversation, don't you think?" she said, and shrugged. "I don't know about you, but I'd rather sleep than answer a hundred questions. We'll just have to deal with it for now."
Ayato went around the left side to grab a pillow. "You take the bed. I'll sleep on the—"
"Neither of us is sleeping on the floor," Yuri cut in matter-of-factly. She went to turn off the light, then pulled back the covers on the right side of the bed. "It's just one night, anyway. Besides, after everything that's happened, I don't really expect you're in the mood to try anything tonight."
He hesitated, glancing down at the bed and then at her. She waited, arms folded, like she wasn't going to get in until he did. After a moment, he set the pillow back down. It wouldn't be the first time they had slept next to each other within the last few weeks. And although a bed had different connotations than a couch, she was still right. Or he was too drained to press the matter. Giving in, he allowed his body the mercy of dropping onto the mattress.
The bed shifted and Yuri slipped underneath the sheets beside him. She buried herself snugly in the covers, breathed a sigh of relief, and settled. Then, with her head nestled in her pillow, she turned to look at him.
"You heard Masuda," she said gently, touching his arm. "Try to get some rest."
Obediently he closed his eyes. He lay there, waiting, listening to the sound of her breathing. When at last it slowed and grew peaceful, his eyes opened again. And somehow the world seemed even darker.
The thunder was gone, and the sirens. No monitor beeps, no doctor chattering at him, no information to process or old friends to greet. No distractions. Nothing. Nothing left to keep tonight suspended in the air.
So it all came crashing down.
It was as if someone slammed a mallet on the lever of a carnival game and sent his heart rocketing to his throat. The air in the room felt thin, yet smoky and stifling at the same time, as if perfumed with a diluted cloud of shadow essence. The last thing he wanted to do was awaken Yuri with his hyperventilating, so he bunched the sheets up over his nose, trying to ground himself to this world with the scent of fresh linen.
They were gone. Both of them. The very thought blurred in his mind like a sentence he could reread a thousand times and never understand.
After he'd graduated from high school, there had been times where he sensed something akin to surveillance. As if school losing its hold on him only made Kimito's hold that much stronger, and every now and then he would feel the weight of his permanent role as his father's son. This continued even into his life in Mizuzaka, the occasional mild suspicion of being watched, studied, and judged. Yuri used to tell him it was a side-effect of growing up in a smaller town or city, an ingrained wariness of watchful eyes or being put under the microscope.
But lying here in Akuma tonight, Ayato had never felt less seen.
The distance between himself and his parents was no longer cities but worlds. Despite his father's abuse, despite his mother's emotional distance up until recently, despite everything… compared to estranged, orphaned had a much hollower echo.
Would he miss his father? No. That wasn't what this was. This was grief and relief colliding as they bounced recklessly around inside him, ricocheting off the walls like rogue bullets along with the rest of his thoughts and giving him no respite.
(Heart attack killed him – I did – no he had a weak heart – but the hypnotism – he tried to kill me – he's dead – they're both gone – and Hayato – it's just me—)
(Go to sleep go to sleep GO TO SLEEP)
Why would his brain torture him incessantly with these overlapping thoughts? Hadn't he been exhausted only a few minutes before? (A glance at the clock corrected him that it had been thirty.) At this point, he preferred the part of the night that had just been listening to Yuri drift off.
He turned his head to look at her. Watched her chest rise and fall. Resisted the urge to reach over and brush the bangs out of her eyes. It reminded him of how she'd looked in the computer room when they'd found her. A vision of peace after a struggle.
She was the last person to see his mother alive. The last person his mother saw in this life. The thought gave him some comfort. Though he wished he had been there (and as terrible as it was, he also didn't, clinging to his last memory of her as the tranquil moment at the park and the train station), if he were in his final moments, Yuri's face would be the one he'd want to see.
That she was here with him now…
Feeling conscious of his own staring, he turned on his pillow to face the ceiling again. But he could still hear the sound of her steady breaths, feel the warmth of her lying next to him.
They were gone, but she was here. He hadn't lost her, not yet.
He closed his eyes, letting the tears creep down to his pillow, and submerged himself in the sounds of rain and sleep.
Preview:
"I didn't mean to wake you up."
"That's what you called it when we first met."
"Oh, forget it, you can do it in here."
"It really is you!"
"What happened five months ago?"
"Otherwise it would have been a miracle if he survived."
"I'd welcome the company."
[Chapter 59]: While You Were Away.
