A/N: I really should go rewatch the whole of the Team Batista series again. XD My skills had been pretty rusty when it comes medical type of convos...

"The results show that most of Keiwa-kun's vitals were currently stable. It didn't look like his condition would deteriorate drastically... so we could move him to a normal ward."

"That said, since Keiwa-kun was showing no signs of waking up... we'll keep him on ventilator just in case. I had the results from the tests I did on him earlier, and so far his brain activity seemed normal. There weren't any swelling or blood clots to be found, so we can rule out stroke being the cause of Keiwa-kun's current situation. And we'll continue to keep monitoring his condition..."

Neon reached out to hold on Sara's hand to keep her reassured. "At least, the situation didn't get any worse."

Sara nodded slowly. "Yeah... but I can't help thinking about all of the things that Ace has said this afternoon—"

Win nodded his head. "Yeah, me too. I feel like there's still something that Ace had kept from us. Or perhaps something he himself had misunderstood—"

Michinaga frowned at him. "Misunderstood... you say? THE Ukiyo Ace... could be mistaken about something?"

Win shrugged at the former buffalo rider. "Well, it's not as if he had gone through something like this in the past... not to mention, when it comes to his own powers and Keiwa, Ace didn't always have a complete understanding over the matter."

Neon frowned for a second before nodding her head. "That's true," she started to say.

"Come to think of it... if I'm not wrong, Keiwa's the only one who had been able to completely trick Ace and take him by surprise."

Michinaga stared at her. "What did you mean?"

Neon shrugged. "Well, you wouldn't have known about it since you're already gone by then... but quite a long time ago, Girori had tried to have Ace eliminated from the DesiGra. So he extended the game after the previous last boss was defeated... and tried to get Keiwa to take Ace down during the Fox hunting round."

Win rolled his eyes at the reminder. "Oh, that. That time Girori almost killed me by turning me into a walking land mine!"

Neon nodded her head. "Yes. Back then, Keiwa had pretended to be allying with Girori and cornered Ace to defeat him. But actually, he was trying to lure Girori out so that we could get proof that the current Game Master was abusing his power and rigging the game." She shrugged. "At that time, Ace had been completely fooled thinking that Keiwa really tried to kill him for real."

"Oh..." Michinaga gasped. "That reminds me, that time during the kick-the-can game Tycoon also took us by surprise by turning himself into bait so that we could take on that giant Cactus Jyamato. Despite the fact that none of us agreed to work together on the plan he cooked up."

Win nodded his head. "And back then Ace didn't suspect a thing when Keiwa slipped away with Tsumu-chan, thinking that he just wanted to take her away from Jitt."

Michinaga glanced at Win. "So you're saying—?"

Win pursed his lips as Michinaga, Neon and Sara turned their attention to him.

"Perhaps Ace wasn't the one who had been unconsciously draining Keiwa's life force to restore his original powers." He shrugged. "I mean, amongst the six of us... who was it that would've wanted Ace to recover his lost powers the most? Who was it that would've gone to the lengths to make sure that Ace's body could be restored back to normal? Even at the cost of his own life?"

Sara let out a gasp as she realized what Win was trying to say.

"Keiwa! Keiwa himself was the one who tried to give back Ace's powers to him!"

Michinaga just pressed the side of his head in frustration. "That reckless idiot! But well, I guess it made the two of them the perfect couple then."

xxx

Tsumuri stood quietly in front of Keiwa's bedroom door.

After taking a long breath, she started knocking on the door gently. "Ace-sama..." she started to say. "Will you open this door?"

She thought about how Sara had tried to comfort Ace earlier when the fox rider had cried uncontrollably... and she couldn't help feeling envious at how naturally Sara had been moved to want to soothe Ace of his current distress. But of course, Sara had been living as an older sister longer than she had after all. And Ace was almost the same age as Keiwa, give or take a few months apart. Offering comfort towards a younger sibling must have come naturally to Sara anyway.

Tsumuri thought of the time when Ace's wish had first been granted after he had won the DesiGra finale and become the Desaity again for... was it his fifth (?) game as Ukiyo Ace? She had rued the aftermath of that wish right away, as soon as the wish had been granted. Because it just made her uncomfortable treating Ace as a 'younger' brother. It's not just because of the rule that stated that Game Navigator shouldn't be getting close to any players. But because looking at Ace reminded her of some of the past 'Aces' that she had encountered before. Since some of them used to annoy her so much before, and it was weird to have to treat that same face as her own brother.

Not that she really disliked Ukiyo Ace that much.

But honestly, at times she didn't feel like she deserved to have someone like Ace to be her younger brother.

Seriously though, she had no idea what she could do to ease Ace's sadness. But she was aware of one thing at least; she knew how much Keiwa meant to Ace. She had been watching him (and everyone) for a long time after all. Even before she was made aware that Ace and all the other previous Aces were actually connected by the same soul.

Ace had rarely allowed himself to get too close to any other players in the DesiGra in the past. To the point that he used to be viewed by the other players as snobbish or even cold-hearted. It used to baffle her at first since some of the past Aces she had encountered had varied levels of friendliness towards their other competitors and rivals. But Ace had been asocial from the very start. But after connecting the dots together and finding out that all of the Aces were incarnations of that very first Ace, she understood why.

Anyway...

...Ace had started to change a lot ever since he met with Keiwa. Ace started to allow himself to open up his heart and let other players get to know him better. And because of Keiwa's influence as well, Ace also began to want to care about the well-being of other players and be more empathetic toward other people. Because of Keiwa, Ace had grown more comfortable showing his kindness much more openly than before. That's how much of an influence Keiwa had on Ace.

For Ace to realise how much suffering he had unintentionally brought to someone so important, how much hurt Ace must be feeling inside his heart right now?

What could she do to even lighten that heavy burden inside of Ace's heart? Would Ace even allow her—or any other people—to reach out to him?

"Ace-sama..." she called out again.

"...please don't keep hurting alone."

A/N2: Lol I was worrying about how to write this chapter from scratch since I wanted my 'sleeping beauty' to stay asleep for a lot longer. So I needed some filler scenes to fill the in-between in the plots. But eh, things were working fine. XD

omg my words failed me on that last line... 😭