We have finally reached the end of the First Nonary Game, and the end of Keiichi's childhood. We will be jumping 9 years into the future with the next chapter, which I am very excited for!

I hope you enjoy this chapter and thank you so much for reading!

Chapter 5

"Rikona!"

Keiichi beckons Rikona to come near the door with the wheel-like knob – and behind that their exit most likely awaits – where he stands, while the others at the top of the stairwell, trying to see if the others are coming. "Come here!"

"What's wrong, Keiichi?" she asks concernedly, as she walks over to him.

"Our numbers didn't add up."

"What?"

"When you add up our numbers, their digital root is not 9."

"1+3+6+7+9," Rikona murmurs to herself, and then her eyes widen. "That's 26, but the digital root of 26 is 8!"

"I told you!"

She shakes her head. "That can't be . . . the door opened." She brings her wrist to her face and inspects her bracelet. Taking note of the two buttons on the side, she begins pressing them. She purses her lips and taps her foot on the ground impatiently as nothing changes on the display. "Show me your bracelet for a second," she commands to Keiichi.

Keiichi obediently holds out his wrist.

Rikona furrows her eyebrows in concentration as she presses the buttons on his bracelet.

A hyphen appears, and then the screen displays a 0.

Her eyebrows shoot up to her forehead as she turns to meet Keiichi's widened eyes. "What the hell?!"

"D-Do that again, Rikona," he insists.

So, she presses the button again. 1.

Once more. 2.

Press. 3. Press. 4. Rikona goes on to do this a few more times before the screen displays a 9.

Her eyes widen and her mouth drops open. "Uh, hold on." Her voice is wary and slow.

She quickly walks back to the others and crouches down to sweetly talk with Aya. Keiichi sees her play around with Aya's bracelet, and then nodding at her with a smile, before she walks back to Keiichi.

"Her bracelet reacted like mine, and I'm willing to bet the others' will, too." Her shoulders are slumped as she speaks.

"So, it's just mine?"

She nods slowly. "F-Father said to always to stay with you in the game," she begins in a stammer, "because Mr. Hongou gave you a special advantage. I should have taken his words more seriously," she whispers regretfully.

"What do you mean? What's going on with my bracelet?"

"Keiichi." Rikona bites her lip, unsure. "I think your bracelet might be a free pass of sorts."

"What do you mean?"

"You can enter any door you please."

"Yeah, I can do that since my bracelet number is 9!" If a person adds 9 to the digital root, it will remain the same.

Rikona shakes her head. "No, that's not what I mean."

"Huh?" He is starting to feel anxious. What is she talking about?

"I don't think your bracelet number isn't really 9, Keiichi." Her eyebrows knit together, struggling to make sense of her own thoughts, it appears. "I think . . . I think it adapts as any number."

Keiichi's eyes bug out of their sockets once more in shock. "What!?"

"I really think it does, Keiichi . . . Let's take the digital roots of our numbers, for instance," she suggests. "1+3+6+7+9. If you add those up, you get the digital root 8. And, yet, the door opened, which is impossible because that door clearly had a 9 on it. That can only mean two things: either your father tricked us into thinking that door opens with a digital root of 9, or your bracelet number changed to 1 to adjust to the digital root requirement." She grabs his wrist to press the left button on the side of the bracelet twice more, and the screen changes to display a bright blue hyphen, and then a 1. "And it seems to look more like the latter, at this point."

"No way," Keiichi whispers.

Rikona sighs. "I wish we had known earlier. It would have been a huge help."

Keiichi nods in agreement. If only he had played around with the buttons on his bracelet soo –

"Son of a bitch!" he suddenly hisses, as his thoughts lead him to a most obvious conclusion.

"What?"

"I think Light knew."

"About your bracelet?"

He nods his head eagerly. "Yes! He asked if he could check it when we were in the kitchen, before. I didn't pay attention to what he was doing, but somehow he knew, Rikona!"

"That's why he made us go ahead through the last door," she realizes, her widened eyes meeting Keiichi's.

Questions race through Keiichi's mind. How was Light able to deduct such a thing? Did everyone or anyone else have such a function in their bracelet? If not, was this simply a glitch in the bracelet's functions, or was this an advantage given to by his father?

Did Keiko have the same, glitched Number 9 bracelet? From what she has been transmitting to Keiichi, they did not follow the same numbers for the final door - instead they divided into 1, 2 and 6, and 3, 4, 5, 7, 8 and 9, following the same groups they separated into the chapel door. Something everyone on the Gigantic should have thought to have done. Keiichi realizes that everyone needless panicked, but they could not be blamed, considering the pressure that life-threatening situation has placed on them, especially as they were on the final hour and the incineration command was activated as well.

"Nona!" Fumio suddenly cries out, breaking Keiichi and Rikona out of their silence.

The two children turn to the others, to see a crying Nona climbing up the last of the stairs. They give each other a look before walking over to them.

Keiichi steps forward to squeeze Nona's shoulder. "Nona, are you okay?! Where are the others?!"

She sniffs. "The detective got us out and we were all climbing up the stairs, but then Aoi realized that Akane wasn't with them," she cries. "They made me go up while they went back to get her, but I heard them screaming while I was coming up, and I think something's happened to Akane!"

Keiichi gives the staircase a long, lasting glance. From what Keiichi has gathered from the past nine hours, Akane was someone very crucial to his father's game. His father is too meticulous to make a mistake – there is no way that Akane being placed in this group was an accident, and it was no coincidence that she happened to be the wearer of the bracelet number his father told him to follow. Something is going on . . . something that has to do with his father's possible prosopagnosia, with this awful game, and with Akane.

That bastard must have done something to her.

"Keiichi, no!" he hears a voice cry, breaking him away from his thoughts, along with someone tugging his arm. He looks up to see Rikona near him, tears streaming down her cheeks, which makes him realize that he must have started walking down on the staircase.

"You can't go down there and get stuck, too!" Aya, too, sobs, as she brushes past Rikona to grab his other arm and pull at it. "Come up, Keiichi, please!"

As Keiichi walks up the steps with them, Ryota, too, comes forward. "We don't know if we've lost them or not, but we can't risk losing you, too."

That banishes most thoughts of going back down to save Akane from Keiichi's head.

Not a full five minutes later, Keiichi hears the sound of footsteps running up the metal staircase. He peers over the railing to see three figures rush up the staircase. He squints to see Seven carrying Light on his back, while Akane and Aoi lag a little behind.

The world begins to move quickly and before Keiichi realizes it, the detective has everyone seated in an emergency lifeboat, which he promptly releases from its hook. The boat begins to lower into the ocean, and his chest feels much lighter.

And his wrist.

Surprised by this sudden feeling, Keiichi's eyes fly to his wrist, which is now bare.

"Hey, our bracelets are off!" he hears someone cheer.

When the boat finally settles on the water, he looks down to his lap, where his cursed bracelet has fallen to. No longer is he Number 9. The bracelet number that his father must have allotted to him, so that he could bend the rules . . .

As they start to row away from the cruise liner, Keiichi hears an awful crashing sound. His head whips back to see that it has come from the ship itself.

- - November 2nd, 2018; 6:37AM - -

The sun is beginning to rise. They all watch the Gigantic sink in silence, the only sound being the mighty roar of the ship descending into the water. Keiichi feels Aya cringe beside him, and she grips onto him tightly. He turns to Rikona, who sits at the other end of the boat, and sees her body shake slightly.

And then, the madness finally stills.

The waves crash, the boat rocks, and the detective, Ryota, and Light paddle the oars against the water with soft grunts.

"It's over," Keiichi hears Aoi, who has his hand on Akane's shoulder, whisper to himself.

"Yeah," she answers back, her overused, raspy voice brimming with happiness.