Chapter 14: To Love a Child

Three weeks before server shutdowns

Blip. Blip. Blip.

Kazuto watched the second ticker on his digital clock appear and reappear as the time snailed its way by, seemingly intent on dragging at his patience until it turned into anger. He saw the time the clock presented to him, knew it was past one in the morning, but his brain chose not to process this particular information. After all, he had a good reason to be doing this.

In his right hand, the one farthest from the clock, he held his phone. It was set to dial Asuna's number at the flick of a thumb. Squinting at the light shining from the digital clock and the small halo surrounding it, Kazuto tried to will time by more quickly one last time before closing his eyes and giving up.

It had finally been nine months. Well, eight months and three weeks, technically, but that was unimportant. Kazuto knew that the last week of their VR ban was more of a precautionary measure than anything else, and all the scans he had had at the doctors told him that his brain cell levels were more than healthy. Asuna, too. They were ready to reenter the virtual reality. To reenter Aincrad.

To see Yui again.

Their surprise at finding that the servers were to be shut down had been blinding, in a sense. They had been so preoccupied with this new bit of information that they had forgotten about the imminent lifting of their VR ban. The long months of waiting were now past, and they would be able to reunite with their daughter again, albeit for a short amount of time.

It wasn't much, but it was something.

When Kazuto had first come to the previous conclusion, his first instinct had actually been to refrain from seeing Yui. After all, what good would come of it? Spending three weeks with her would not erase the pain of nine months, and once the servers were shut down he would have to miss her again. True, Yui was compatible with any World Seed based game, but that meant constructing the proper algorithms, coding the environments, and basically making sure such an idea would work out without damaging their daughter's data. Letting Yui walk into an unstable game would be potentially catastrophic, and it was a risk Kazuto would not take. He had begun the process of building a game to house Yui, but it would take many more months to complete and make sure it was safe.

And so he had thought about not going back. Leaving Yui alone for that much longer. But was such an action not selfish? Kazuto knew it would put personal strain on himself to see her for such a brief period, but did the same apply to the girl? Despite her computing and administrative capabilities, he had to remind himself time and time again that their daughter held the mental maturity of a girl her apparent age. Kazuto had never really taken the time to wonder how "old" Yui was, but she for all the world acted exactly like an elementary schooler. During his earlier years when he'd just found out the true identity of Suguha and his aunt, Kazuto and laid on his bed wishing his real parents would someday come to reclaim him. Of course, he knew that this was never going to happen, yet he still poured time into thinking about how wonderful such an encounter would be.

Yui's situation was almost identical, except he wasn't dead. He owed it to her to return.

Blinking that far-away feeling away from his eyes, Kazuto refocused on the clock and realized there were only thirty seconds of waiting left. According to his calculations (and deductive reasonings), it would be safe to establish full dive at exactly 2 AM, eight months and three weeks after the ban had been placed upon them. His eyes watched the second timer at the corner of the digital display progress almost desperately. Then, the timer achieved the thirty second mark and his thumb dialed Asuna's number.

She picked up after the first burr.

"Is it time?"

"Yeah. It's time," Kazuto murmured back. It was late, and everyone else in the house was asleep; not that his aunt didn't know at least vaguely what they were trying to do. "Are you ready?"

"I can dive at any moment," His lover whispered back through the line. Although she wouldn't be able to see it, Kazuto nodded in approval. He took a moment to make sure his specs were properly set before speaking again.

"Alright, let's do this."

"Here we come, Yui..." Her voice trailed off as she hung up the phone.

Kazuto licked his lips a final time before saying the words that would change everything.

"Link start."

He felt the change of the air around him, from still to sighing. The temperature around his skin had altered as well; it was warmer now, the sun was slipping between his equally different clothing. Opening his eyes, Kazuto took in the virtual reality for the first time since his encounter with Takashi, where he had been forced to dive and jeopardize his safety to save his lover.

It was a familiar sight. A forest of modest looking trees, mostly pines and other coniferous variants, sprawling towards the horizon, the endless expanse of green marred only by the massive blue lake laying in the center. The air carried the scent of strawberries, and summer, and morning dew. A slight shift told him that they stood on the stone surface of one of the floor's many portal altars, the links between the realms of Aincrad. A road snaked away from them, made of dirt and beaten down by the feet of other players who wouldn't come again. Their home would be somewhere along the end of that road, Kazuto knew, as well as the spot where they had first met Yui.

"It's been so long, hasn't it?" Asuna said breathlessly at his side, reaching out to twine their fingers together.

Kazuto took another moment to breath in the scent of summer before answer.

"Yeah. Too long."

They walked, then, hand in hand, down the beaten path. Soon the forest reached out to embrace them, and their noses were struck by the smell of the lake's water somewhere far ahead of them, and they followed it to their home nestled among a swath of young pine trees. Yui wasn't anywhere to be seen at the moment, but they took no worry from this, knowing that their daughter would know that they had come for her at last.

The two of them were not required to wait much longer. The air above the cabbage patch suddenly began to writhe, the individual atoms twisting and warping to allow Yui to tear open a hole between the floors and tumble through in her haste. Kazuto saw her small body hit to the floor and was suddenly unable to do anything but breathe, too overwhelmed after all this time of being away from his daughter.

Yui picked herself up off the ground and dusted off the hems of her summer dress before standing and turning to look at them.

A smile that broke their hearts.

"Mama, Papa..."

An hour later, the three of them were sitting inside their previously uninhabited home on the 22nd floor, enjoying the rays of sunlight streaming in through the window. Kazuto was sitting next to Asuna on the couch, with a passed out Yui sleeping soundly on the latter's lap. Their reunion had been a tearful one, filled with words of love and kisses than promised security, even though they wouldn't be able to provide it. The small girl had spent the last sixty minutes bouncing around the house in a whirlwind of questions, or perhaps it was a maelstrom, as she demanded to know everything which had occurred during their separation. Her parents, overwhelmed by the excessive inquiry, could only smile and provide her with certain key information that wouldn't require any sort of long explanation. This was because they knew she would fall asleep from exhaustion once her questions were equally exhausted, and right they were, as evidenced by the current scene.

It was alright, though, Kazuto decided as he brushed Yui's bangs out of her eyes. They wouldn't be able to share the many years together that he had hoped for, but there was still enough time to let her rest and hear the full story later. He simply couldn't allow himself to feel that their time was inadequate, was all. There was nothing he could do about it, so it was best to be grateful for what he was given.

What a mature line of thought.

"This is how it should be, huh?" Asuna said affectionately then, staring down at their daughter's sleeping face.

Kazuto followed her gaze before putting her words together. "It should be like this. But it isn't. Or at least, it won't be."

Her eyes softened. "You're right, of course. This isn't going to last forever."

Kazuto twined their fingers together again, drawing his partner's gaze. "Nothing lasts forever," He said. "Best to enjoy what we can, before it's gone."

He instantly regretted his words when tears began to spill from Asuna's eyes. "Oh, god, I'm going to miss her," The girl choked out, reaching up to wipe at her eyes.

Kazuto did it for her instead. "No. Don't cry," He said firmly. "We've endured this for so long, even longer will be nothing. Someday, Asuna, I'll make it so that Yui can be ours forever. It won't be right now, though, and it might not be for a long time, but I can promise you that it will happen."

Asuna stopped sniffling for a moment to turn and smile meekly at him, although out of shame or amusement he was not able to say. Then she leaned over and kissed him, taking away the need for words.

Yui shifted in her lap.

They both looked down to watch the AI awaken. Her eyelids fluttered, and then those dark grey irises greeted the afternoon sun.

"Ohayo," She said sleepily.

"Good morning," Asuna whispered back.

They stared at each other for a moment.

"Am I really going to die, Papa?"

His heart skipped a bit. "Who told you that?"

"PoH. He came, and he told me that he would going to destroy me."

Silence.

A silence Asuna apparently had every intention of continuing, because she had clammed up, jaw gone rigid, not open to giving answers.

But Kazuto knew that like everything else, it couldn't last forever.

"I won't lie to you, Yui," He said. "I don't know what PoH has to do with it, but it's true that the SAO servers are going to be shut down in a few weeks. Once that happens, it may be a long while before we can see you again."

He had been worried that she would cry upon hearing this, but the small girl took this information almost in stride, pausing for just a moment to process it before nodding in understanding. "I'll wait here, then, Papa."

Kazuto's heart throbbed to see her accept this so easily. How much hardening had their daughter gone through during his absence? "I'm constructing a game that will be able to harbor your data. I could finish it in a few months, but there would be high risks of bugging that could corrupt your systems. I won't allow that to happen, Yui. I want to make sure you'll be able to live in the game unharmed and unopposed, because I just can't...I can't stand to see you accept everything like this."

She smiled back at him, but it lacked happiness. "I've been accepting things for such a long time, Papa. I'm accustomed to it."

"Don't become too used to it," Asuna ordered softly, reaching out to stroke Yui's hair. "You don't have to take everything that happens to you. It's okay to get angry sometimes, because...such things have to happen sometimes."

Rika had said something very similar to Kazuto, that one unnaturally chilly day when she'd come to comfort him about this very same topic.

"It's something I had to learn, myself," He agreed. "But let's not talk about things like that right now. We still have three weeks left. Let's make it worthwhile."

Yui nodded and smiled up and them.

"Thank you."

The day progressed after that, the subject of their impending re-separation being pushed to the back of their respective minds. Personally, Kazuto half regretted revealing all of his and Asuna's problems to their daughter. She was their child, and she didn't deserve to have to know what was troubling her parents. And he'd been almost disturbed by the look of...maturity in her eyes when he'd revealed the news. The girl had already learned to adapt to adversity, despite her mental age. He regretted putting Yui through that, too. Then again, his whole life seemed to be in a period of metamorphosis at the moment.

He remembered thinking during his first visit to the cemetery dedicated to the dead of Aincrad, that Akihiko's true crime had been his theft of the years and youth of ten thousand. Once he'd returned and managed to retrieve Asuna from ALO, Kazuto had been eager to return to the high school life he had always known. It was going to be better, he'd decided, because it was the life he'd been craving after years in a death game with the addition of friends he had bonded with over time. His expectations had not been totally fulfilled, however, as Kazuto confusedly watched his high school days slip by like ropes of code streaming across a computer screen. Kazuto had always thought as if his life in reality was put on hold while he was stuck in Aincrad, and he would be able to resume it where he had left of once he returned.

Now he would be leaving for Tokyo in a month, and Asuna would be coming with him. He would be leaving his aunt and Sugu behind to lead their own lives, and Klein wouldn't return from America in time to say goodbye. Rika would be gone too, the one person who had been capable of taking of Asuna for him when he alone could not, the one person who had left a part of herself with him with her lips, wherever in the world the blacksmith may go. Keiko's senpais wouldn't be around anymore. If one thought about the last five years of Kazuto's life, it could be visualized as if he had shed the skin of the false identities of his guardians, then shed the skin of innocence in Aincrad, then shed the skin that had been his life in reality.

The sun was dying when he and Asuna left the front door of the house. Yui had already left, saying something about wanting to relate the good news to Greta. They didn't know who that was, but they trusted their daughter to keep herself safe.

"You know, it's a little weird," Kazuto voiced as they took a seat together on the swinging chair on the porch.

"What is?" Asuna asked, leaning against him to brush her nose along his jaw.

He hummed at the contact. "I thought after the memorial, our ties to SAO were going to slowly disappear. But after today, they've only strengthened, though for the better."

Asuna sighed and nuzzled her face into the curve of his neck, as if this would help her reach a quality conclusion.

"I don't know," She replied. "To me, our ties to the virtual reality aren't ever going to fade. As long as people like Yui and Rika or Takashi exist, we aren't ever going to separate ourselves.

"So best make the most of it."

The heat-control vents of her NerveGear were still humming softly from the openings above Asuna's ears when her eyes fluttered open to greet the gray roof above her. It took Asuna a few more moments to figure out where she was; after nine months, it was a bit difficult to transfer between what was real and what was not. Then it came back to her. She was laying on her bed with the blinds closed, and there was a sort of heavy atmosphere in the room, as if the heat outside was at high levels.

Reaching up, she flicked open the visor to her helmet and pulled the metallic helmet off of her skull, placing the NerveGear on her bedside table slowly and steadily. She noticed that her heart rate felt a little high, once again most likely due to her becoming unaccustomed to full dive conditions. Her body was adjust with time.

Then something occurred to her. I don't have much time, though.

Breathing in deeply, Asuna swung her legs off the side of the bed and landed on soft feet, padding her way over to one of the blinded windows to pull it open. She had undergone full dive just before two in the morning, and had stayed in Aincrad from late morning to sunset, meaning it must be the height of day at the moment...

Asuna was virtually blinded when a lance of sunlight slipped through the opening she'd made and struck her in the eyes, forcing her to close them. Keeping her pupils shielded, she opened the blinds to the rest of her windows and did not reveal them until they had adjusted to the feeling of the sun against her skin.

Just then, the door opened behind her.

Turning, Asuna saw her mother allowing herself into the room. Their eyes met and the older woman frowned at her, and the younger bit her lip, awaiting a rebuke.

"So I see you've finally roused yourself," She said at last.

"Yes."

"So, did you see Yui?"

Asuna was surprised to hear her mother, who disapproved of the very notion of the girl, referring to her by name. "Yes, I did. I missed her very much," She added, choosing to leave out the fact that Kazuto had been there as well.

Her mother continued eyeing her, and Asuna kept awaiting her scoldings, but they never came.

"Hitomi came about half an hour ago. She wanted to see you, and perhaps go out for a little while. You slept past church, so don't worry about that. Tidy yourself up before you go to meet her."

Blinking, Asuna said, "Thanks," Before her mother nodded and closed the door.

Once she was gone, Asuna shook herself before shuffling over to the bathroom to tidy herself up as her mother had suggested. On the way, she wondered why she hadn't been harshly criticized. After all, she'd stayed up well past midnight to full dive a week before the ban was lifted and meet an artificial intelligence.

Standing in front of the mirror now, Asuna's eyes were drawn to how incredibly messy her hair had gotten over the course of the night. It had spent nearly half a day cooped up within a metallic helmet, and the result was a frizz generated by the heat the NerveGear produced when used. Frowning, she ran some fingers through her locks, wincing when they caught and pulled at the roots. Briefly, she wished that Kazuto was there at the moment to brush her hair for her, knowing the man would take his utmost care not to yank on any of the silky strands.

Ten minutes later, she was presentable (record time for a girl). Stepping into the hall and striding to the main room, Asuna found Hitomi waiting politely in a chair for her arrival. The college student smiled at her when their eyes met.

"Sorry for keeping you," Asuna yawned as she stretched her arms above her head. "I was...sleeping."

"Were you, now?" Hitomi asked, with that wry smile she always wore that somehow manage to make everything into a sexual innuendo. "You've overslept quite a bit, Asuna-chan. Didn't know you were the type."

"Me neither."

"In any case," Hitomi continued, "Let's go out for some coffee, yeah? You really look like you've just gotten out of bed. My treat."

Asuna smiled gratefully at the offer. "Thanks, that sounds great. We can go right now."

Asuna blinked in surprise when a stray sakura petal danced across the wind to land gracefully in the center of her cup, as if by fate. After recovering from this, she smiled thoughtfully as she watched the heart pink petal send ripples across the pure black surface of her coffee, wondering if it would continue to float or if it would sink to the bottom, consumed by the darkness.

Then a pair of fingers reached in to pluck the sakura out and toss it back into the wind. "I bought that so you could drink it, not start a garden," Hitomi quipped as she leaned back in her seat to down the rest of her own drink.

The younger girl watched the petal until it was gone before looking back at the college student. "I was almost done with it, anyway."

"Be done with it," Hitomi replied back with lightning wit. "Luck doesn't favor those who leave things unfinished."

"Yes, sensei."

"Anytime, kid."

Hitomi brought her cup up to her nose to sniff curiously at it for a moment before setting it down. "Anyways, I didn't invite you to coffee just for idle chat, regardless of how much I'd like that. Your mother requested something of me."

On guard immediately.

Stirring what was left of her drink, Asuna stared down at the swirling liquid and asked casually, "What is it?"

Hitomi seemed almost to smirk at the obvious attempt at nonchalance. "She had an...idea, I guess you could say, concerning your future in college, but felt that it would be wrong for her to talk to you about it herself and ask me to do it. Apparently under the assumption that you would take it better from me."

Asuna began downing the rest of her coffee, using her eyes to convey the message Just get to the point already.

Hitomi decided to indulge her junior, as well as her own urge to let the ball drop as soon as possible.

"She thinks you and Kazuto should live together during college."

Asuna's nose flooded with coffee.

Hitomi allowed herself then to bust out laughing as she watched the younger girl desperately wipe away the black stuff from her face while simultaneously trying to force the coffee swishing about in her nasal cavities into her stomach. And she didn't stop laughing, either, until Asuna had at least gained some of her breath back, by which time Hitomi had totally lost hers.

"Oh, I can tell I'm going to have a lot of fun with you in college, Asuna," She sighed.

"That's not important right now!" The girl yelled, drawing attention from the other tables of the cafe. "What do you mean, live together?"

"You see, this is why your mom didn't want to broach the topic herself. She'd probably have a seizure if you got coffee all over one of her impeccable suits."

"That isn't funny. Now, spill."

Hitomi chuckled again. "She expects you and Kazuto to be responsible for paying bills and whatnot, assuming you go along with the idea. Apparently, she isn't so against your relationship anymore, and it would teach important things to you two about living the adult life."

"Is the adult life really so packed with adversity?"

"It is, trust me."

"B-But," Asuna rebutted, trying to find something to say against this. "That's what...like, married couples do! Or at least people in a very serious relationship!"

"But isn't your relationship with Kazuto serious?" Hitomi countered. "You've known him for years now and even I know you have absolutely zero interest in other men. Nobody would be able to understand you but someone who's experienced that death game as well, and I'll also say that most of the guys who play such games to begin with aren't all that attractive. How many handsome men do you find inside a VRMMO?

When Asuna's expression remained stubborn, Hitomi sighed in exasperation. "Look, I'm not forcing anything on you," She amended. "It's not even my idea, though I agree with it. The final decision will be yours, but give it some serious thought, okay? You've seemed really preoccupied with...otherworldly things lately, and it might be healthy to worry about your earthly concerns every now and then. Just a thought."

"Otherworldly...I guess you could say that." Yui...

"Alright then. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to get back to the hospital. My break ended an hour ago."

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