A/N: My plot is usually quite simple tbh... like rn it's mostly about dealing with the aftermaths of stuff while we try to move on. Or I'll just let Tsumuri elaborate on everything.
Half the time I already leave out the clues all over the chapters. Anyway, sorry if this chapter gets draggy. (Like seriously half the time I was typing this half asleep. Which was usually when the muses start coming)
Tsumuri let out a long sigh, as she silently watch Keiwa and Ace exchanging words in between yowls and whines and whatever that fox sound Ace was making at the moment. For a brief moment, as much as the current situation wasn't anything worth celebrating, she was glad at this sudden turn of events.
For a while, she had wondered what happened to Keiwa ever since Ace's prayers for him to be revived were answered. Because back then, Ace's prayers weren't quite working as he had hoped for. Which made sense, perhaps, since unlike most of the 'deaths' in the past DesiGras... Keiwa did die compared to the other past players and victims who mostly ended up in comatose states or were kept in stasis when they supposedly 'died' or were removed from the game.
Back then, Ace managed to bring back Keiwa, but Keiwa's life was still in danger. By then, Ace had almost exhausted all of his powers to fix the damage Suel had done and reset this world again. So she also made a prayer of her own, to help Ace take Keiwa to a hospital where Keiwa's life could be saved properly. She had prayed for the two of them to be safe... and she was waiting for Ace to return to give her good news about Keiwa.
Alas, Ace did not return unscathed after leaving her to try to save Keiwa. But instead, a white fox had appeared before her.
.
It took her a while to figure out that the albino fox was actually Ace. Until the fox later brought a bunch of Core IDs with him, including his own. Still, it didn't mean that she didn't have any other method to find out what happened to Keiwa. It was the same way she managed to keep track of the other three DesiGra survivors—Michinaga, Neon and Win—or any other survivors who had contact with the DesiGra in the past. It was through what's left of the technology of the original dimension she came from.
But because Ace had turned into an actual fox, it had become even harder for the two of them to even communicate with each other. Half the time she felt like she had just been talking by herself while Ace remained clueless as a mere fox. All that was left of what she could do for Ace was to make sure the fox was well-fed.
And then sometime later she started noticing how Ace don't occasionally show up when she called out for him. Sometimes he didn't even return for days. She almost thought Ace had finally lost his mind and fully regressed into being just a normal fox and living in the wild. Until she spotted Ace during one of her regular observations of Keiwa's daily activities. She realised that Ace was still the old Ace, continuing to do the things he used to do to take care of his loved ones... even after being reduced to a fox form.
She stopped worrying too much about Ace afterwards.
Yet she wondered if this was what was best for Ace. Wouldn't he be very lonely, not having anyone hear his voice anymore? Not having anyone recognise him anymore...
.
But now she suppose there was no longer a need for her to worry about her 'little' brother...
xxx
"I'm back..."
Sara stood up at once as Keiwa walked in with the pet carrier. Ace immediately half-ran and half-limped into Keiwa's room after he let him out of the pet carrier.
Sara stared at Ace's retreating figure wordlessly before turning to face Keiwa. But before she could say anything, Keiwa suddenly hugged her closely. She gasped in surprise.
"K-Keiwa... is something wrong?"
Keiwa just buried his face in the crook of his sister's shoulder and hastily wiped away the tears that started to fall again from his eyes. After regaining his memories, he just couldn't stop the emotions that kept rushing out. He kept recalling the moment he saw his sister... and Michinaga nearby—Michinaga had admitted to killing his sister and he must've had his own reasons why he thought he have to do that when the Jyamato they were dealing with at that time were completely different than the ones they've fought before, but then at the time he was so overcome with grief that he couldn't really think straight.
And whatever happened afterwards... well, what DID happen to him and everyone after that?
He was still so young when their parents died. But because his older sister was still around, he just buried his grief deep inside and just focused on living happily with his sister and taking care of her as best as he could. Sara was quite hopeless after all, as much as she was quite smart and good at learning anything that she needed to learn, his sister was quite clumsy... and really not good at doing stuff like cooking and housework—well, she could be better at it if she tried hard enough... but she was such a scatterbrain.
He never realised how much he depended on his sister until that point when he lost her. Because afterwards, all of his repressed emotions burst out and he didn't know how to deal with it.
Keiwa pulled away from his sister as he wiped away the remaining tears on his cheeks.
"It's nothing... ", said Keiwa as he forced a smile at her. "I just missed you so much."
"Gosh, Keiwa... you're such a little baby!" exclaimed Sara as she dragged Keiwa to the dinner table. Keiwa could only chuckle at that.
Sara took out a small box containing two slices of cream cake and opened a big bento box containing an assortment of sushi and sashimi before grinning at him.
"Oyama-san treated me with this as an extra reward for helping out today. Let's eat!" exclaimed Sara as Ace eyed them silently from afar.
.
Keiwa shoved a piece of sushi into his mouth as he was reminded of something. "Oh yeah, what happened at the office?" he asked Sara as she just shrugged at him.
"Ah, it was nothing much..." said Sara as she sipped on her juice. "Just that there was a sudden big workload was dropped in and then Sakakibara-san had sudden stomach flu... and there was a mix-up in the computer database and everyone needed to chip in on organizing all the paper documents..."
Keiwa winced immediately after hearing that. "That... didn't sound like a 'small' thing..." he quipped as Sara turned her attention to him.
"That said, what happened with Ace? I thought you went to the Inari shrine to ask about him."
"About that—" Keiwa smiled weakly. "I guess we now kinda have a new pet fox." He shrugged.
"I found out that Ace was a sacred fox from that shrine... and his name was really Ace! What a coincidence!" explained Keiwa again with forced cheerfulness, as he repeated what Tsumuri had told him before when he initially asked her about Ace.
"Really...? That was interesting." Sara frowned. "But that still didn't explain why Ace was still here."
Keiwa sighed.
"About that... I suppose Ace had gotten too fond of me." He smiled weakly at his sister. He might as well let out a bit of the truth to her so that she wouldn't question him too much about Ace. Keiwa can't possibly tell her that Ace used to be human after all... and it's not like he could tell her about the DesiGra. And after everything that has happened, it's better for her that Sara forget everything related to the DesiGra.
"Do you know something? Remember last time when someone found me unconscious and sent me to the hospital? Turned out that it was Ace that dragged that person over to help me." Keiwa shrugged. "I guess, since then Ace had grown fond of me and tried to look for me again afterwards."
Sara gasped aloud in surprise. "Whoa... I could never imagine that! Suppose Ace was really a sacred fox to know how to do those kinds of things..."
"You have no idea how true that was," whispered Keiwa to himself as he smiled again. "And I suppose, it's good that I have Ace to keep me company."
Keiwa hesitantly scratched the back of his head as he added. "Earlier, I had a sudden panic attack. And Ace helped me a bit to calm down... I guess that's good, right?"
Immediately after hearing that, Sara's face twisted with worry again. "Ah, was that why you came back later than you're supposed to?"
"Y-yeah... sorry about that. I didn't want to worry you."
Sara just shook her head at him. "Silly Keiwa. I AM your older sister. It's my job to worry about you."
xxx
"Took your time to come back here..."
Keiwa slowly closed the door behind him before hissing at Ace softly. "Quiet down... my sister can hear you if you're too loud. And it might be tricky to explain to her how I could talk to you normally."
The albino fox in front of him just cocked its head at him. "I can't help it!" barked Ace again as Keiwa heard an odd sound from the fox. Ace just turned his face away from him.
"I was hungry."
Keiwa snorted at him before waving a pack of beef jerky at him. "If you're so hungry, you could've just joined us earlier. There's still quite a bit of sushi and sashimi left over..."
.
Keiwa tore open the pack of jerky as Ace jumped over to his bed and grabbed the jerky Keiwa offered him to eat. He just continued to watch the fox as Ace finished the rest of the jerky in a matter of minutes.
"Yanno, if you're still hungry... I can always grab the leftovers from the fridge. Sara would've just thought that I ate them all."
Ace just jumped onto his lap before glancing up at him.
"I couldn't JUST join the two of you earlier, honestly..." explained Ace as Keiwa witnessed the oddest sight of a fox rolling its eyes at him. "The two of you had a very private moment... and I couldn't intrude on that. And then the two of you were talking all about me."
Keiwa chuckled again at him. "Why? Were you embarrassed that we were gossiping about you?"
"Not in the least—" Ace spoke before the fox suddenly stood up and pushed Keiwa aback as he lay down on his bed. The fox's eyes narrowed on him as it climbed over him—and for a brief moment, Keiwa thought he saw Ace's human form hovering on top of him. Keiwa tried to blink the image away but the illusion didn't quite go away.
"That reminds me, I overheard an interesting bit of information earlier from your sibling talk."
The albino fox leaned closer towards his ear as it barked softly. "You said that my presence CALMED you..."
Keiwa felt heat rush over to his cheeks as he tried not to think about how Ace's close proximity to him earlier made him feel a lot of things all over his body—including somewhere he shouldn't be focusing on, given their current situation. "W-well... i-i-it's t-t-the truth after all. There are a lot of things I had to deal with earlier... and it scared me, but then you're there..."
The fox's mouth started to pull up into a sneaky grin and Keiwa thought he saw Ace's old baby-faced cheeky grin and rosy cheeks looking down on him. "Oh? So all my kisses to you calmed you so much, huh? How about I give you another long, deep kiss again..."
"N-No!", yelped Keiwa before hastily covering his mouth for fear that Sara could hear him from outside. He'd already locked the door of his room earlier, right? So Sara can't just suddenly barge in—no! He wasn't EXPLICITLY thinking about that first night when he first brought Ace home and he... and Ace... to him—!
Ace's eyes suddenly narrowed into slits.
"What? This afternoon you can just happily molest me out in the open, yet I cannot kiss you? How is that fair?"
Keiwa blushed again as he recalled again that memory. He shook his head. "N-no... t-t-that's different! You wouldn't let me check that shrine out and then—!"
Ace lowered his head again towards his face until Ace's snout and Keiwa's lips were barely inches from each other.
"No need to be embarrassed about it... or you can just close your eyes and imagine me as a human kissing you—"
Keiwa's heart started to leap in heaps and bounds—but not in a painful way—before Ace leaned even closer...
... and licked Keiwa's cheek.
Keiwa thought he saw Ace's human face grinning at him again as during the time Ace tricked him into 'lending' his Boost buckle to him.
"Just joking!" Ace chuckled, as a fox can do in its own way. But before Keiwa could push Ace off on top of him, Ace started licking Keiwa's face again and nibbling on Keiwa's ears and neck.
Keiwa was totally at this wicked fox's mercy!
A/N2: Some of the points mentioned in this chapter were actually stuff I've been mulling about the series for quite some time. At some point, I did try to include these theories in my Imperfect AU as well, but I decided to keep it vague there.
Also, a bit of fanservice, cos my Ace muse kept drumming the scene in my head for three days and nights now DX (Can't quite blame him tho, he IS quite lonesome...)