Chapter 22: The Spaces Between

True to his promise, Kazuto returned home as quickly as he could, not that doing so gleaned him any benefits. Upon crossing the threshold, he found Asuna busy doing the things she felt she needed to do, her pace of work and demeanor clearly reflecting her desire to avoid any sort of conversation. So it appeared that she had been aware of what Hitomi would interrogate him on. But why the fearful air? There was an almost dreadful smell in the atmosphere, like their home was a mouse hole and a voracious lynx was pawing at the front door.

Regardless of anything he managed to pick up on his partner, he knew it was best from long years of experience to let Asuna sort her own problems into order before confronting her about them. She wasn't the kind of character to engage with when she hadn't yet prepared accordingly, as this often resulted in a jumbled and disoriented conflict. Despite her confident and knowing aura, Kazuto knew there were many things she was unsure about, perhaps even elements of herself. It was always best to scout out the situation before acting, and never make any assumptions. SAO had taught them that.

Due to this decided course of action, however, Kazuto was forced to wait until nighttime to talk to his lover; he was summoned for an emergency shift at work on a spot notice, and was forced to leave as quickly as possible. There were obviously still some apprehension attached to going into the Complexity building for his shifts. After all, he was working in the same premises as his greatest current enemy. He had managed to avoid any sort of contact with Fuzen since that fateful moment where he had revealed everything, which was fortunate enough, not that it had taken any special effort. The president didn't seem to be actively seeking him out; simply the push of a button would be enough to force Kazuto to stand before him, yet such an action had yet to be taken.

Please...Don't challenge Fuzen any further.

As much as he didn't wish to, Kazuto had to place some importance in those words, and the meaning behind them. He understood very well that Hitomi's father was a dangerous man, but he had accepted this risk when he'd chosen to attempt to bring Yui to reality. Of course, he would have taken the chance regardless of how formidable his foes may have been, but that was currently out of the question. Kazuto couldn't claim to know Hitomi's deepest thoughts, fears, and experiences, but he knew the woman well enough to conclude that she wasn't one to blindly decide who had the advantage in a face off. If anything, she was a very calculating individual, always making offensive or teasing remarks but somehow never crossing the final line. She was a person who was always aware of the situation, as well as how much weight to place in certain elements. A rational human.

That said, there was something unsettling about the absolute conviction with which Hitomi had stated that he should not incite Fuzen's wrath any further. If such a self-confident and aware person as her held so much faith in her father's ability to destroy their operations, and so little in his ability to thwart him, what did that mean for the wisdom of his actions? Not the mention the desires and ideals that had driven himself, Asuna, and Hideki to such lengths. Accepting Hitomi's claims to even the slightest degree put everything they had done so far into question. The sixty-five percent of Yui's body that they had laid out? Questionable. Their strategy to steal her data from Complexity? Subject to scrutiny.

In the end, the easiest thing to do would be to forget everything Hitomi had said and simply forge onwards with his initial intentions. But that could be potentially detrimental, and even fatal, Kazuto knew. He couldn't ignore new developments simply for the sake of his own self-assurance.

But there were still other factors to consider. There were other motivations besides his love for Yui. For instance, his rage at Fuzen's insolent threatening of his family's well being, as well as his treatment of Asuna and Hideki. Were his anger and love enough to overrule the universality of pure logic? Yes, he knew their actions were extremely dangerous, with a high chance of failure. Yes, he didn't know what Yui even thought about this entire ordeal; he was going on assumptions at this point, albeit strong and justified assumptions. What if, somehow, she didn't want to be saved? Yui had changed so much during the nine months they had been banned from VR...would another substantial character shift be enough to spawn such a desire? If so, if his daughter genuinely rejected his efforts to "save" her, then he might give up now, just for her. But he hated Fuzen for what he had done. And he loved Yui for what she was.

It was one of those internal arguments where both sides had equally valid points.

All of these thoughts were swirling around in Kazuto's head as he worked in his usual spot within the Complexity building, clashing in his brain like lightning bolts. It was giving him quite the headache.

Nothing I can do about it now, he thought as he sat up straight in his chair, wincing when the carbon bubbles between his vertebrae popped at the movement. Hanging his arms by his sides, Kazuto looked to his left and stared out at the darkening night outside. It occurred to him that Asuna was still alone at home, and he wondered if she was alright by now, and if she would be more open to communication when he returned.

Feeling the drag of the day catching up to him, he decided he needed a cup of coffee. Perhaps too late to vie for such a thing, but instinct drove him. Rising from his seat, Kazuto turned and made his way to where the coffee was brewing. It would have been a fairly average trip to the coffee brewer too, not that he kept tabs on that, had he not noticed something out of the corner of his eye.

Fuzen. Stepping out of the floor's elevator.

Heading straight for him.

Feeling his heartbeat increase its pacing, Kazuto quickened his steps and rushed into the break room, closing the door securely behind him. This, however, offered no safety for him; almost every office and room in the building was composed of transparent glass walls, meaning anyone could see anything going on at any given time.

This, unfortunately, included Fuzen.

The president opened the door moments later in an impossibly calm manner, considering the massive multitude of eyes staring into the room at this very moment. Obviously, Fuzen's presence in this area of the building was not only an extremely rare sight, but also some sort of warped privilege, evidenced by the random workers and secretaries ogling the two of them through the glass.

Kazuto did his best to ignore it all. As far as he was concerned, the world only included himself, Fuzen, and the room they stood in. All exterior elements were either irrelevant or too much of a distraction to consider. This was a delicate situation, here. His wrist shook somewhat as he erratically attempted to pour himself a decent cup of coffee, cursing inwardly when a small portion tipped and spilled onto the counter beside the cup. Proof of his nervousness. This wouldn't do. Using two fingers, Kazuto wiped away the minor spill and rubbed the wet stuff away between his skin, still refusing to turn around and acknowledge Fuzen's existence. Instead he stood, sipping absently at his drink, staring down at the weak steam rising from its liquid surface.

It wasn't working. He couldn't ignore it; not the man literally breathing down his neck at this point, or the bone-chilling air in the room, or the prying, hideously curious eyes gazing at them like they were test subjects. That was what he couldn't stand the most; just why did they have to simply stand there and watch? With all this attention, he felt trapped, pinned down by the collective interest of these individuals who understood nothing about the situation yet did not fail to add to the pressure, the grinding, crushing pressure that had begun the moment Fuzen stepped out of the elevator. It made him want to scream, seize his cup and fling it at the glass walls like a wild animal, shout and demand his privacy. Yet he forced himself to keep calm, somewhat satisfied that he managed to contain himself to a small twitch of his fingers.

"It's been a while since I bothered to visit the lower floors," Fuzen murmured in his usual deep voice, tapping two fingers onto the wooden desk in the center of the room.

The words blasted in Kazuto's ears like a thunderclap, making his irises shrink in terror. Inwardly, his mind was mightily confused. Why was he so afraid? Or was it even fear? Perhaps anger; a fury so all consuming it took away his self control. But since when had he felt such stress from having to encounter Fuzen? The idea of it had never worried him so much in the past, but now that the situation was genuine and real it felt like the ceiling was slowly descending upon him, intent on crushing his bones to dust.

Upon further thought, Kazuto realized he both knew and didn't. His vendetta against Fuzen, the scheme to revive Yui, keeping it all a secret...they had all been on his mind relentlessly, never moving or giving room for additional thoughts. Suddenly, his mind began lashing out, trying to find examples to support his claim. When was the last time he had taken Asuna out somewhere? All his days were engulfed in building his daughter's body. What was the status of his grades in college? He didn't even know what he'd gotten on his last test. All the details. All the important points were being sucked into the massive vortex that was Fuzen and Yui.

It had overspilled the limits of his mind, and now it was beginning to eat away at his resolve.

Gripping the cup so hard he feared breaking it, Kazuto yanked his dry lips apart and muttered, "I see."

"Your days must be quite dull around here," Fuzen continued, as if the atmosphere even remotely recommended colloquial conversation. "No money to make. No friends to see.

"No daughter to look after."

Kazuto felt the muscles in his jaw shriek in protest when he clenched his teeth hard enough to chew metal, feeling the fire in his stomach beg for him to turn and lash out at the man, drive his physical self into a state of despair. But he couldn't do that. Once again, logic had to trump primal instinct.

Closing his eyes and letting his rapidly twisting irises to settle down, he took another shaky sip of coffee and answered, "Well...it isn't the worst thing ever. At least I don't cause trouble for anybody."

Fuzen smiled almost amiably at him. He saw the president's expression from his reflection on the wall.

"Yui must be unimaginably bored as well," He murmured much too calmly.

He felt a fist clench around his chest and knew the adrenaline had begun to pump through his veins, already preparing him to scream and throw his fist into Fuzen's nose, reach his fingers in and tear out that tongue that he dared to insult his loved ones so, shatter the fingers that had ordered more offenses to be carried out.

"I didn't expect you to be so accepting of the situation," Fuzen hissed in surprising proximity, and Kazuto knew he was standing right behind him. "Not that you could do anything to save your bastard child, but it would have been most entertaining to watch. Seeing people struggle towards an unattainable ideal is certainly fascinatingly depressing...you, however, have so far failed to supply that amusement. What is the matter, Kirigaya-san? Is my grip on your balls simply too tight?" The execute asked almost concernedly. Despite the fact that a vulgar word had passed the older man's lips, it still felt sinister.

Kazuto couldn't believe the amount of effort he had to exert to keep himself from jumping on the man and tearing his eyes out so he could shove them down his throat and throttle him till he perished. Almost all of his mind was engulfed in that ancient, blood-driven urge to maim, damage, kill-

"Cat got you tongue?" Fuzen whispered, chuckling slightly. "Good. It the duty of the weak to shut up and do as their superiors say. And right now, I want you to struggle. Do something to try and oppose me, Kirigaya-san. I honestly and wholeheartedly dare you. After all, I hold all the chips. And regardless of how much you may think that Yui belongs to you...just remember, as of this moment, she is nothing but a mongrel I've found convenient to keep around. Do not forget that."

The force being exerted by Kazuto's fingers exceeded the limits of the cup's durability, and the china shattered underneath his wrath, sending little shards of the stuff all across the counter. He saw the spectators outside the room start in surprise. Laughing at this development, Fuzen simply turned at left, carving a path through the sea of workers gathered outside, paying them no heed.

Kazuto spent a full minute staring at the crimson blood running down his knuckles before clenching his fist and deciding to run. He flew out the door and past the men and women shouting questions at him, through the workplace and down the stairs, unable to take the elevator and bring himself that much closer to Fuzen. Everything was all a blur around him, his mental faculties too busy wrestling down the reeling state of his consciousness to pay attention to the outside world.

He had spent many years facing adverse elements of the real and virtual worlds, but in the process the realm within himself had been overtaxed.

He didn't pay attention to where he was until he felt the cold air outside kiss his skin, and Kazuto realized he was standing outside the front entrance of the Complexity building. A few passerby were giving him odd looks, and it occurred to him that he must have burst out of the door in a very frenzied manner, and he probably looked quite disheveled.

Kazuto waited for them to pass before pressing his back to the wall and falling into a deep squat, clutching at the roots of his hair. It was cold, and he had left his jacket inside the building, but he was beyond caring. Why now? Why did he have to begin losing his resolve at such a time? He had come this far knowing that their side was the right side; that Yui wanted very much to be rescued, and that they would succeed in providing that. They would deal a severe blow to Fuzen, their enemy, and reclaim their beloved. That was how it was supposed to be.

Then Hitomi had come, having uncovered their secret, demanding he cease his activities. It was too dangerous to challenge Fuzen. He would lose everything he had, little he did, and hurt everyone else in the process. Well actually, he had already hurt them, according to her. A statement that was beginning to prove itself. He remembered Asuna mentioning the other day that Klein had returned from America. He had been caught off guard to hear that, thinking he would have been notified by Klein himself of the man's return.

"Well he called you earlier, but you didn't pick up," She'd said.

He hadn't? But he usually picked up all his calls. Then he realized that call must have come while he was working on Yui; nothing else would cause him to ignore something like Klein's return. A week later, he'd overheard Asuna arguing with Lisbeth over the phone. Something about failing to maintain a proper line of communication. The next day, his mother had texted him asking if he was alright. He used to call all the time; these days she was afraid to visit, less she kickstart something negative. He had refused to acknowledge it then, but Hitomi was right; their campaign to save Yui was killing their relationships in the real world.

So could he sacrifice all his current connections in reality to pursue a potential one? His initial response had been yes; the bonds he had with his friends could more than weather it. Hitomi's confession had been the first evidence to prove this assumption wrong; it was only due to her bravery that she had been able to ask him to stop pursuing his daughter. If Hitomi, someone he didn't consider as close a friend as Lisbeth or Agil, was hurt by his actions, how would his family and friends feel? How would Asuna, who was even involved in the plot, feel?

His mantra had long been a statement that condemned weakness. For to give up was to lose, and to lose was to die. A mere month ago, he might not have questioned this motto. But now, he felt about ready to laugh hysterically about it. Long, endless hours slaving alongside Hideki to build an entire human body, with Asuna fretting and trying to help as much as possible with her limited ability regarding computers. Having the project on mind twenty-four seven, then watching his professors scold him about a horrible test score through sleep-deprived eyes.

His mind was giving in. He could feel it. It didn't help that he knew Hideki was facing similar hardships as well, stumbling into the office on unbalanced feet and laying his sore eyes on massive piles of paperwork and company issues that would confound even the brightest minds. A endless stream of issues no doubt orchestrated by Fuzen. If Kazuto was the only one going through troubles, he might have shrugged it off and powered on, but knowing that everyone else was suffering dealt a fatal blow to his resolve.

So in the end, only one person gained from this. While he, Hideki and Asuna spent their hours, and their family and friends drifted ever further, a single individual was capable of benefiting.

Yui.

And he didn't even know if she truly wanted any of this.

Time passed then like a whetting stone grinding across a sword's steel surface. Despite his troubles, Kazuto didn't allow them to show through his already cracked inner fortitude, and over time Asuna returned to normal as well. His lover never mentioned or questioned him about what Hitomi had told him that one gloomy morning by the sea, and whenever he met the nurse she didn't say anything regarding it either. Simply a spontaneous confession, it seemed, though it still left its mark.

He remembered the day they had begun to grow the biocapsule. The fingers of time were just beginning to reach into the surface of April, and during the first week Kazuto was able to witness the beginning of the end.

He couldn't keep a slight wetness from his eyes when he raised his arm and trailed his hand along the glass surface of the tube, eyes locked on the small particle floating in the center. Yui's body was to be grown within tightly monitored conditions, and this meant starting and finishing the process inside a large tube filled with some odd fluid. He didn't know the specific abilities of the substance, but it would keep Yui alive, and that was all he cared about.

At first, it had been too small to see; simply a fertilized zygote. It was dividing cellularly at an incredible pace, yes, but it was still a full day and a half before the multitude of cells could be seen with the naked eye. A mere week later, it had formed into a tiny likeness of an infant.

"Regardless of the moral issues attached to it, it's a beautiful thing to watch," Hideki had said.

Kazuto had chosen not to share his misgivings about the validity of their conspiracy against Fuzen with Asuna's brother. Firstly, he was unlikely to understand his thoughts. Second, he didn't see much worth in instilling the same doubt within Hideki as well. Besides, he wouldn't let Hitomi's words effect him too deeply. Yet as much as he told this to himself, Kazuto could not totally repress a mixed feeling of joy and pure fear as he watched Yui's vessel grow larger and larger by the hour. Whether he liked it or not, the attempt to bring his daughter to reality would be made. If it succeeded, and all was well, then there would have been no need for his concerns. But if it failed...

He had branded it an obvious mistake earlier, but Kazuto ultimately chose to try and forget his confrontation with Hitomi. The plan was going to be carried through anyway; he couldn't let something like a fear of Fuzen or doubt in Yui's own willingness to stop him.

No matter how much it ate away inside.

The minutes, hours, and days all melded into one entity at some point in time, which he could never exactly pinpoint. First it was mid April and then it was the end of June. Three blinks of the eye later and it was July. Meanwhile, he could feel his connections to reality slipping further and further away from him. Eventually, it came to the point that his own mother, a natural worrywart, did not contact him for a full month for reasons he had only himself to blame. Takanashi, with whom he had developed a sort of budding friendship, could only look away awkwardly when they made eye contact at school. Asuna fell into the habit of ignoring Hitomi's efforts to make connections with her, instead devoting herself to the plan as much as possible to block out everything. One night her mother called, and Kazuto was shocked to hear his lover shout something very rude into the phone before slamming it down. Despite all of the trouble Kyouko may have caused in the past, it had never been enough to warrant such vitriol.

So she was breaking, as well.

Still, the two of them forged on. There was only one thing driving them at this point, and that was Yui. That was the ultimate goal. If it could not be achieved, everything was for naught. The little shreds of effort they had used to maintain their foothold in reality was pulled back and instead devoted to this one single cause.

Was Hitomi right? Was Agil right? Did virtuality have such a strong hold around him that he couldn't stay rooted in the real world without having to return at some point? There had certainly been a time where Kazuto had shunned what was genuinely there in favor of what was fabricated, but he had believed those times past. But now there was nothing on his mind but the world of numbers and special effects, computers and visuals. It was almost like the only thing keeping him in the realm he was in was the fact that he needed to be here to rescue Yui. If he could simply take Asuna and enter a virtual world where he could be with his daughter forever, he very well might have taken the opportunity. After all, everything he had in reality was beginning to disintegrate, and most of those things had been discovered in SAO, anyways. Lisbeth. Agil. Klein, and Yui. Even Asuna, the love of his life. All his relationships had been born and founded in a universe that did not even exist.

It was so surreal he couldn't think through it all clearly.

Kazuto had doubted his belief in going down fighting and never giving up before, but now he embraced it, ignoring everything else for the sake of this one mission. He would fight tooth and nail to achieve its success, burn all the bridges necessary to reach it. And if it still failed, then he would break. But not before.

With this concluded, Kazuto was able to shrink the world around him to include just him, Asuna, Hideki, and the warehouse they operated in. This way, time didn't slip by so painfully anymore. It was a whole new level of being desensitized.

And so came the fateful day.

The day everything ended.

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