Chapter 18: Episode 18
"You wish to bring your mother back to life?"
Yuki stood before Deus in the Cathedral of Casualty. The glow of purple encompassed by the dome dyed the occupants in its own hues. Deus sat on his throne placidly, peering down at Yuki as the girl stared back at him with clenched fists and misty eyes.
Ever since Deus had dragged her as his unwilling contestant, Yuki had mixed feelings about her former companion. She unwittingly plunged herself into thoughts of whether this deity of time and space had planned from the beginning of making her play a part of his sick game, signing her up for an unpropitious fate in a world of carnage and chaos. Was their friendship a lie? Or did she make the fallacious assumption that they were friends? Who was the misguided one here?
Nevertheless, Deus was…the only one she could go to. To make things right.
"Yes! It should be easy for you since you're a god, after all."
"It's impossible," Deus calmly replied.
Yuki grimaced. "Why?" she demanded.
"I no longer have the power to alter the current causality continuum. Along with my powers, I too will perish." The god turned his chin and revealed a cracked hole that had formed around his right eye. A few pieces of his porcelain countenance fell, and Yuki couldn't help but feel shocked at the visible deterioration.
"When its master dies, the world will lose control over its casualties," Deus continued his explanation. "Following that, the world itself will be destroyed."
"He's right," Murmur said. She was sitting on a ball in midair that gently rocked itself up and down. "Your mother's death isn't the only one. Everyone will die, including you." She directed a knowing smile at Yuki. "But there is one way to prevent that. There is one way to save everyone and make your wish come true. You just need to become a god."
July 12 10:15 [at home]: Nishijima-san called to say that there will be two detectives posted at my house since there's a chance that Dad would come home.
July 12 10:32 [at home]: Nishijima-san brought the detectives. One of them is the one I shot.
July 12 10:34 [at home]: Nishijima-san and the detectives asked me questions about Mom and Dad. They asked the same questions over and over.
July 12 11:02 [at home]: ...
It was as if a cold hand grabbed her heart and squeezed. Yuki's body shook in realization.
"It was Dad…?" she whispered in disbelief.
Somewhere in the living room, a thud resounded. Yuki tensed.
She waited a moment or two. Apprehensively, she stood up with her blanket wrapped tightly around her frame and tentatively stepped down the stairs. Yuki tightened her fingers at the corners of the fabric as she peered down through the darkness, and blinked when she was able to make out the sprawled figure on the floor.
"Dad!"
Yuki flung the blanket back and hurried to fetch the medical kit from the bathroom. Returning to the living room, she flicked on the lights and helped her father onto the armchair before treating to the man's wounds. Thankfully, they appeared to be superficial and did not require professional attention. Still, the bloody smear by the door's entrance worried her.
"I came to take care of some business, but someone attacked me in the dark," her father sheepishly chuckled when Yuki began to set aside the medical kit. "It probably had something to do with my debts."
A flicker of rage settled in her that caused her teeth to grit. How could he be so flippant? How could he just pretend? How could her father just waltz in here and just laugh away as though there was nothing wrong?
"You stabbed Mom, didn't you?" Yuki said.
He looked at her, startled.
"Turn yourself in."
He laughed again. "Oh, come on now…"
"Don't play dumb!" she snapped. That flicker exploded into flames. Yuki was furious.
"Yuki-chan, do you have any evidence that I stabbed your mother?" he responded lightly. He was smiling, but she couldn't read his eyes. When Yuki didn't say anything, he went on, "If you don't, you're just making empty accusations."
"You're not denying it either," she said in a harsh murmur. Her father said something in return, but she wasn't listening anymore. Her eyes immediately zeroed in on the pamphlet that lied next to his jacket—Mashita Pawnshop Claim Stub, it read.
"Pawnshop claim stub," Yuki said with a frown. "Are you keeping something at a pawnshop?"
"Th-that's nothing you need to know," he said hastily, pushing the pamphlet under his jacket.
Yuki's frown deepened. Stammering, an instant nervous reaction, hiding something. Yuki wasn't Nishijima or Akise, but she wasn't blind to what was obviously suspicious. It was true of what her father said—she didn't have any substantial proof that he was the one who killed her mother. However, the fact that he was behaving so dismissively when his ex-wife was dead was telling. And so was that pawnshop.
She wondered if she should be afraid. If her father really was the—the killer, then would he go after her as well? And why did he kill her mother? There were a few reasons that Yuki could trace back on—him housing bitter resentment for the divorce, the nagging and badgering of her mother—but they were either implausible or inconsequential. Yuki couldn't think of anything definitive other than crazy and selfish, which, judging how the man had been the past couple days, seemed concrete the more she mulled over it.
Her anger faded into a muted emotion. She watched dispassionately as her father lit incense and made his prayers before her mother's framed picture. Here was the man who deceived her, who snatched the parachute and left his own daughter in the crumbling Sakurami Tower. She could forgive him for his escalating financial troubles, for causing her mother grief, for him wanting to break her phone because he didn't know that her life was tethered to it, but everything else was inexcusable.
Here was the man who used her to pay back his debts, who abandoned his own daughter to save his own life. This man was no father because no father would ever give up on his family. Amano Kurou wasn't perfect. No one was. He never tried, though.
Tears were welling up. Yuki swallowed the lump in her throat and looked away. The pawnshop—Kurou might go there tomorrow. That would be her evidence, wouldn't it?
She turned around and left for her room, picking up her blanket on the way. Shutting the door behind her, she then changed out of her clothes for a T-shirt, shorts, and knee-high socks to wake up and go out for the next day. She then dialed on her phone Akise's number. She had amends to make.
"Yukiyori-san?"
"Hi, Akise-kun," she said softly.
Yuki was…a naïve fourteen-year-old girl. She was a crybaby and had no redeeming qualities and always needed to rely on someone to get by. But that was okay, wasn't it? What were friends for if not to support one another? Yuki didn't have much to offer to Hinata, Mao, and Kosaka; she especially couldn't hope to repay back to Akise for all that he had done for her. Yet they offered their friendship with smiles on their faces and extended their hands out to her.
Yuki may be a coward like her father, but she wasn't an idiot. She was, after all, her mother's child too. To some extent, she knew that she couldn't and shouldn't take on the burden by herself and give in to the insanity of the Future Diary game. Her mother wouldn't want her to do that—she raised her to be better than that. She refused to be selfish, though; she vowed to give her friends her life as they had given her theirs.
"Akise-kun," she began, "I'm sorry for calling you this late at night, but I want to apologize about what I said earlier in the hospital. I'm sorry for doubting you. You're right about plans having holes in them; despite how much we may hope for them to be perfect, nothing can ever be. I'm thankful, though, that you're doing this for me. I'm thankful that you want to be friends with someone like me. I'm thankful that, even though it's really dangerous to be involved with a survival-game participant, you're willing to stay with me.
"I don't know why you're doing all of this for me. Hinata feels like she has to owe me and Mao tags along with what Hinata does. Kosaka is… He's doing this because he feels like he's obligated somehow, I guess. But I don't understand you at all. It could be that you're only interested in the mysteries that I bring for you to solve, that all of this makes your life more exciting even though I'm scared for my life. Whatever your reason is, it doesn't matter to me anymore.
"You don't need to explain yourself to me. In time, when you're ready or if you want to, you can tell me. I trust you, Akise-kun—that is what I have decided."
There was a period of silence that followed afterwards. Yuki almost thought that Akise must have fallen asleep during her confession; she did call him at a bad time. Admittedly, her decision in spilling out her feelings to Akise was a spur of the moment. She needed someone stable…and that person was none other than Akise.
And the person on the other line spoke. "Thank you, Yukiyori-san. I…" He paused. "Yes, once everything is over, I will tell you. You deserve to know."
"I'm happy," she breathed out shakily, "that I have you, Hinata, Mao, and Kosaka. I promise that I'd do what I can to protect you guys. I'm weak and I get scared easily, but I'll try no matter what." She would try, unlike how Kurou failed to do.
"That won't be necessary, Yukiyori-san. I'll make sure of it," Akise said seriously.
A smile spread across her face. "Okay. I trust you, Akise-kun."
"You didn't tag honorifics to the others' names, yet you did to mine," he observed.
Yuki's mouth shaped into an open circle. Akise was right. "I didn't notice until you mentioned it."
"Is this favoritism or am I being left out?" he said, tone changing into a teasing lilt.
She laughed wetly. "We're such good friends that I suppose we should call each other by our given names from now on."
"In that case, call me Aru."
"Aru. Then call me Yuki."
"I'm honored to refer to you so familiarly, Yuki," Akise—no, Aru said sincerely. "Then I suppose we should change Kosaka-kun to Ouji."
"Ouji. Fitting." Yuki laughed again. "Did you know that Kosaka—sorry, Ouji was a total jerk before we became friends? He still is a jerk, but he's a lot better than how he used to be. He picked on me before, and I sometimes wanted to whack him with my bag so hard that he'd topple over. I'd never imagined him searching for me when—when Yuto kidnapped me or helping out with this survival game. It's amazing how things have changed."
"For the better," Aru added. "You're never alone, Yuki. Not anymore."
"I know," Yuki said. "I know."
And, like floodgates bursting, Yuki began to cry.
"Mom is dead. Dad is acting strange and was probably the one who killed her. I don't know what to. I'm scared and…" she trailed off, her words turning into hiccupping sobs. The tears that she held onto back in the living room now rolled down her cheeks in fat beads, dotting her bedcovers when they landed.
"Shh. It'll be alright. You're safe. You will be safe. I'll protect you," Aru soothed. The comfort that the boy whispered in her ear ultimately lulled Yuki to sleep. Before drifting away, she remembered feeling secured and enveloped in warmness, and it was as if Aru himself was right there by her side.
It was July 10 and Yuki managed to chase down Kurou to the Sakurami Temple.
The bag that the man was carrying, what he had received from the pawnshop, turned out to be a telescope.
Yuki looked from the bag to Kurou, wrecked with confusion.
Kurou weakly laughed and fell to his knees. "I know that the police are going to arrest me, so I wanted time to prepare myself," he said, voice hushed and broken. His hands tightened into fists and his hair curtained his anguished face. "I wanted to apologize to your mother and get back my telescope from the pawnshop that I had sold it to long ago. I wanted to go without any regrets."
"I'm sorry, Yuki-chan," he wept.
Suddenly, he wasn't Kurou—the self-centered and horrid murderer who abandoned Yuki to fend for herself, but her father—the man who failed several, several times yet persisted to love and care for his wife and daughter. Perhaps he killed her mother on accident; perhaps on purpose. Perhaps why he took off with the parachute was because he had to see another day to talk to her mother. Questions upon questions… It didn't matter anyhow.
Yuki wiped away her own tears. "You know, this place has many booths whenever there's a festival…"
"Then let's come here together next time," Kurou—her father—promised.
But there wouldn't be a next time. As her father walked alongside her, making more promises of becoming a better father, of getting a stable job, of getting their happy ending as a family once he finished serving his sentence in prison, a knife flew and embedded itself into his heart.
Yuki watched, stunned, as her father fell backwards. Blood pooled around him, blank eyes stared heavenwards. A kimono of red and corpses—everywhere there were corpses—flashed before her eyes.
She screamed.