Fanfiction: Liar Game -- Rite of Spring, Day Four
Title: Rite of Spring, Final Day
Fandom: Liar Game
Characters: Nao, Akiyama
Rating: T
Summary: Nao finds a strangely familiar boy, and she and Akiyama discover a connection in their past that goes much deeper than they originally thought.
Notes: Part 4 of 5. Read 1, 2, & 3
Final Day
On the surface, Nao thinks, everything seems normal, or at least some facsimile of normal, as they prepare for this outing. Despite both Akiyama and Shin's anxiousness to see their mother, although probably for completely different reasons, Akiyama continues to insist that they go to the aquarium.
“You should come with,” Akiyama says, “at least to the aquarium. We might as well have one real date together.”
Which is why, as Akiyama spends his time working on the laptop and Shin keeps reading her college textbooks, Nao very deliberately, and very much ignoring the warm flush that filled her face, creates three lunch boxes that look almost like mini-seascapes (except that the rice is not blue).
“They're kind of elaborate.” Akiyama murmurs when she's done.
“Ahh...” Yeah, it does seem excessive, now that she looks at the results. “I guess I got carried away. It's kind of nice being able to make fun things for other people.”
“That's fine.” Akiyama says, taking a final look at the lunch box she made for him-the one with the penguins-before she closes the lid and wraps it up. “At least we won't have to buy lunch when we're there.”
“True.” Nao says, a smile on her face.
Akiyama's face becomes a mask. This has to be difficult for him, Nao thinks. “Let's go,” he says.
“Why the aquarium?” Nao asks later, while Shin has his nose to the glass watching the amorphous jellyfish float in their dark tank. She admires their forms, completely organic and elegant, floating without cares or worry. Briefly she wishes the three of them could be like them. But then, she supposes, that would make them unable to think at all.
Akiyama shrugs. “Why not? I thought it would be a fun experience for him, and a pleasant way for us to spend some time together for once.”
She definitely does not object. Her hand reaches out for Akiyama's, and he takes it. “So it really is like a date then?” Nao asks.
He sighs. “Didn't we already agree on that?”
Shin sets the pace, going through the exhibits, somehow both rushing and stalling for time simultaneously. Akiyama would know his younger self best, Nao thinks. That's why he chose this activity because as much as Akiyama loved his mother, and as much as Shin wants to go home, these moments, these few days together, are something Akiyama never had, or at least never remembered.
And Shin, probably thinking or guessing, that returning home to his mother-as much as he wants to-means going back to a life where he never has a chance to do something like this.
“A coral reef?” Shin's eyes widen when he opens his bento, “complete with a shark?”
Nao grins and nods. Then she listens to a fifteen minute explanation taken from the exhibits, about how accurate and inaccurate each and every piece of all three bento boxes are.
“I was always a really quiet kid, I swear.” Akiyama says to Nao, as they leave the aquarium, “maybe he isn't me.”
Nao considers his words. “No, he's very Akiyama-like. You both really enjoy teaching others. Plus,” a warm feeling fills her heart, “when both of you open up, there's always a lot going on behind it.”
“What?”
At Akiyama's confused look, Nao realizes that perhaps she said something too much or inappropriate to the situation. “It's nothing...just forget I said anything.” Nao becomes very interested in her own lunch box, and in finishing the can of green tea before they leave the aquarium for good.
“I see...” Akiyama accompanies his response with a small smile, the one that always leaves her heart pounding just a little bit faster.
“Ahh...I think we should get going...”
The difficult part comes later in the afternoon, as they leave the aquarium, and they all have to face the important part of the day, and all the unspoken lies and truths that they've been telling each other. A quiet, sullen group of three they must make, walking through the park.
Nao breaks the silence. “Akiyama-san, would you prefer taking Shin-kun to visit your mother by yourself?”
Again, those piercing eyes, the ones that seem to dig into her brain and ask, “What do you know?” Nao doesn't look away this time, just gives the slightest nod.
“Do what you want.” Akiyama says, with a shrug that seems to take on the weight of the world instead of lifting it off.
“Nao-san, should come with us,” Shin answers less ambiguously. “Mom would like meeting her.”
Nao tries not to cry. She knows. Akiyama seems to know that she knows. But to Shin, who has not experienced all of Akiyama's life, or realized the steps that took him from the clever boy with a bright future to the current Akiyama, actually seeing his mother will hurt.
“She would.” The older Akiyama admits in a voice that Nao can barely hear.
And to Nao, who has made trying to understand her partner-in-crime and protector one of her current ambitions, it's apparent that though the grown-up Akiyama-her Akiyama-will never say so, he does have a definite preference.
“I'm going with you.” Nao says.
“That's fine,” Akiyama says. “We'll pick up flowers first.”
The Akiyama family grave is a nice place, Nao thinks. Peaceful, somewhat secluded from the rest of the cemetery, although a bit unkempt. She lets Akiyama go first, lets him mourn in peace. Is this the first time, Nao wonders, that he's visited his mother's grave? Watching him pray, Nao looks down.
“Akiyama-san...” She reaches for him, when he finishes.
He shakes his head. “I'm fine,” However, he does take her hand and squeeze it briefly.
When he draws back, Nao goes forward to give flowers to a woman she's never met, but who, in a way, she owes her life to. “Thank you,” Nao says quietly through her tears, “for raising such a wonderful son. I promise, I'll take care of him.” She wishes that she could have met Akiyama Michiko and say those words in person, that his mother had never suffered the fate she did.
The whole time, Shin stays in the background. “Hey!” he starts at first, “aren't we going to see mom? Why are we doing this first?”
As neither Akiyama nor Nao say anything, the possibility seems to occur to him. Nao's heart breaks, watching the painful realization dawn. Shin shakes his head.
“Shinichi,” Akiyama says, using his full name, “Five years ago, mom she--”
Not even the adult Akiyama can say the words easily.
Shin freezes and trembles at the same time, and Nao goes forward to-to comfort him? To shield him from what Akiyama is about to say? To hold him still in the face of the truth? She's not sure. But the moment her hands touch him, he jerks away.
“No! Get away from me! You're wrong! You're lying! I wanna go home.”
They get no more warning before Shin takes off.
“Shin!” Nao yells, doing her best to run after him in her skirt and heels.
Akiyama knows, the moment Shinichi runs off, that this is up to him. Nao's lack of natural athletic ability, plus her completely impractical outfit, mean that Shin could lose her by the first turn if he really wanted to.
Time matters now. But if Akiyama starts running blindly, then he won't catch up. Plus, it occurs to Akiyama, where he catches Shinichi matters as much as, if not more than when. Where would Shinichi go? Not to Nao's apartment, or to the aquarium. Home. Home to Shinichi would be that small apartment where he and his mother once lived. But it's been torn down, and he knows, talking to Nao, that Shinichi knows that already.
No.
Home for that Shinichi is not this time at all. It's eighteen years ago. His younger self knows that too, and perhaps has been thinking about how to get back. Time travel, as an impossibility, means that Akiyama has no clue to the theory or how to make it work. Then, he thinks of the story Nao told him. And then, he remembers an annoying habit he had as a child, one involving listening in on conversations
“You found him in a crosswalk?” He asks suddenly.
Nao nods. “It's just like he appeared out of nowhere.”
If Shinichi had listened to anybody, to the conversation between Nao and her father, or to the later one between Nao and himself, he must have come to a completely improbable but no less-likely conclusion: He's in that coma right now, and he needs to wake up somehow.
So, if Akiyama were in that situation, what would he do, and where would he go in order to ensure that he had the greatest chance of waking up and being in the right place? The lightbulb goes off, and the solution appears ahead of the actual step-by-step logical process.
“Where was the crosswalk where you found him?”
Nao tells him, and Akiyama takes off.
Just not exactly in the direction that Nao pointed him in.
His brain races alongside his body. The image of a hospital comes to mind. The one where his mother intermittently spent the rest of her life going in and out of, and the one where she finally--
It's not quite the closest one to the scene of the accident. But it's the one connected to his family. If he were sick or injured, he would have gone there.
Akiyama catches up to Shinichi outside the hospital building, just barely winded from his long run. Shin himself is nearly doubled over and breathing heavily. He can't run anymore. And to look closer at his face, his younger-self has been crying. It's too much for a kid, even if that kid is him.
“Yo.” Akiyama approaches his younger self the same way he would a scared animal.
“Go away!” Shinichi turns around to hide the evidence of his tears.
Akiyama shakes his head. “I can't.”
“This isn't real. Go away.”
If not for the fact that Akiyama can quite clearly feel the strong spring breeze hitting the sweat on his brow, or the fact that he can hear his heart pounding in his chest, he might agree that this whole thing must be a hallucination.
“I can't.”
“This is only a nightmare. Mom's alive, and I'm not a loser who becomes a criminal and a construction worker instead of going to a good school! I'm smart! I study all the time! This can't be my future!”
Akiyama doesn't know to agree or disagree. He knows his future, and what causes it. “She died,” he states it cold and distantly. “She died because the greedy preyed on her, and she couldn't bring herself to ask for my help. If I had known...I would have quit school in an instant. You know it too, what you would do to protect her.”
Shinichi stiffens, but he doesn't run.
“She never asked. Never gave any sign that she needed me to help her. And then one day, it was too late. Then I found them, the bastards who put her in that position and stole her life away, and I promised to take what mattered most to them. I destroyed them. I traded my previous life for three years in prison for fraud and a criminal record in order to avenge her. And I'd pay the same price again if I had to.”
Shinichi tries bravado. “I wouldn't have gotten caught.”
“I confessed.” Akiyama admits, “I wanted the world to at least see what these bastards did to ruin the lives of so many people, and give Mom a voice in court. But no, the newspapers were so impressed with my single-handed destruction of that company, that all the stories were about the genius con artist and not about what those bastards did that hurt so many people.”
“Some genius.” Shinichi's bitter tone echoes exactly what his older self feels, another annoying habit of his.
The click of Nao's heels on the pavement signal her arrival, as does the loud sound of her respiration.
“Akiyama-san, Shin-kun.” Her sputters and coughs ruin her attempt to look strict. “Don't run off like that.”
“It's okay.” Akiyama moves to reassure her. “Shinichi knows what happened. We're in the right place anyway.”
“Is this where you came after the accident.?”
“Should be. This is the hospital my family and I always went to.”
Nao nods. “Same here.”
“You're in there.” Akiyama says to his younger self, with certainty. Memories of the incident, long repressed and forgotten, come to the surface. “I can't tell you which room or which floor. But you're in there. Mom is with you,” he closes his eyes, “and a man carrying a little girl. I think, if you find them, you'll wake up.”
Shinichi nods.
What more can he tell his former self? Akiyama knows from his experience, that he won't remember any of this. Anything said would be for his own benefit. He has to try one thing though. “You're going to get into Teito University, and you'll even go to graduate school. On September 24th, during your second year of graduate school, take that day off and spend it with Mom. And when she tells you that nothing is wrong, don't believe her. Don't let her go.”
“I won't.” Shinichi vows.
Akiyama still knows what's going to happen. As much as he would love to wake up tomorrow with his mother still alive and proud of him, he doesn't have enough of Nao's foolish trust to actually believe that the past is so easily molded and changed. “And if it does happen,” Akiyama adds, “Don't waste time blaming yourself or Mom. Just do what you have to do.”
His younger self can only nod.
Nao-who has remained silent for a while-walks forward and embraces Shinichi. Lucky kid, Akiyama thinks. She leans down and whispers her parting words into his ear, too low for Akiyama to successfully eavesdrop. Shinichi grins when she's done though. “It's time to go home, Shin-kun.”
Shinichi walks to the hospital entrance. “Sayonara, Nao-san, Akiyama-san.” Everything seems to have ended until Shinichi thinks to add on: “Akiyama-san, if you mess up my chances with Nao-san, you're going to be really sorry!” as he walks into the hospital.
Akiyama watches amusedly as Nao does her best to hold back her laughter.
“What did you tell him?” Akiyama asks.
Nao looks up at him, that warm, scary, wonderful smile on her face that makes him consider saying and doing some very un-Akiyama-like things to her. “Do you really want to know, Akiyama-san?”
“You're going to tell me anyway.”
Her hands go to her bosom, “I told him that he should be very proud of the type of person he's going to become.” That adorable blush comes up her cheeks, and Akiyama has a feeling that she's not telling him the whole story. He considers the possibility of teasing it out of her, and the fun times that could result. After all these months of trying to keep his life with Nao and the Liar Game separate from his daily life, it suddenly seems completely futile to even try.
“Oh? The type of person who appeals to Kanzaki Nao?”
“Well, yes, I guess if you want to paraphrase.” She looks away, almost ready to run. “Akiyama-san?” Nao asks, changing the subject. “Do you think Shin-kun will be all right?”
His answer comes with one-hundred percent certainty. “He'll be fine.”
To ten-year-old Shinichi, navigating the dim corridors of the hospital, somehow invisible in the nurses, patients, and visitors who move around him. He guesses that's a good thing, if only because he's sure that someone would try and stop him from exploring.
As he searches, the echoes of the older Akiyama's story goes through him. He still thinks he could have done better, that he would have kept his mother alive, that he would have had his revenge without giving up his dream, but he understands now, a little bit, how that Akiyama came to be.
And then Nao's final words echo through his head: “Akiyama-san is a strong, smart, kind, and brave person. He doesn't turn his back on the people who need his help, even when it would be easier for him. And he never runs away, even from near-impossible odds. You should be very, very proud of the person you're going to become.”
His own self lies in the center, nigh unrecognizable when it's hooked up to machines determined to track and stabilize every single one of his vital signs.
He finds the room. His mother, kerchief tied around her dark hair, sits at his side holding his hand and crying, and in the distance, as his future-self said, a man in glasses-Kanzaki-san before he got old and sick-carrying a little girl. Nao-san in the present day. The family of the woman who gave him this chance to live at the cost of her own life.
Shin tries not to think of that. Nor think about the fact that his mother, who looks so worn out from this strange perspective, will die before he's had a chance to become successful enough that she doesn't have to work so hard. Nor about the fact that the old man will become sick while his daughter is still in school. He doesn't mind thinking that the little girl will grow up to be Nao, and that for all his future-self did wrong, she seems to like him okay.
Shin shakes his head, that's the future and it might not even be real or fixed. In the present, only one thing matters: They're all waiting for him.
He lies down, and wakes up.
Everything hurts. His eyes hurt, his head hurts, his skin hurts, even his hairs hurt. The last thing he remembers is the sight of the car coming to hit him, the sound of a woman's voice shouting, and the feeling of pavement beneath him, everything else consolidates into a slight feeling that he forgot something important.
“Mom? Where am I?”
“Shinichi!” Her arms surround him, and he suddenly feels like he's been away for a while. “You're alive. Thank goodness. I thought you were-don't run out in the street like that!” He blinks, and finally focuses in on her face, and the tears tracking down her cheeks.
Trying to look at anywhere besides his mother's crying face, Shinichi notices the man in glasses standing in the background. “Who's that?”
The man in glasses steps forward, and Shinichi can see the little girl he carries in one arm. “Someone who is very glad to see you alive, young man.”
“Mom, is this a new boyfriend?” Shinichi never really likes any of the other dates that his mom occasionally has, but somehow having this solemn man as a father and a baby sister to go with doesn't seem horrible.
His mother shakes her head, with tears in her eyes. “I don't think so, Shinichi. It's still just going to be the two of us,” she turns to the man in glasses though, “Thank you, Kanzaki-san. You've been more than gracious, considering everything.”
Kanzaki closes his eyes. “Akiyama-san, I couldn't have done anything else to honor Natsuko's act. Please take care of yourself and your family. And you,” he voice grows stern as he looks at Shinichi, “take care of yourself and grow up to be a good man.”
“Yes, sir.” Shinichi looks at the child in Kanzaki's arms, and the little girl stares back at him from her perch. “What's her name?”
“Nao. She just turned one about a month ago.”
“Nao-chan, huh?” he smiles, “That's a nice name.”
Kanzaki smiles. “Nao-chan, can you wave to Shinichi-kun?”
The little girl gives a smile and a shy little wave, before she buries her face in her father's sweater.
Shinichi smiles back as he lays back down to go to sleep. Everything seems to be about right.
He is where he's supposed to be.
Fandom: Liar Game
Characters: Nao, Akiyama
Rating: T
Summary: Nao finds a strangely familiar boy, and she and Akiyama discover a connection in their past that goes much deeper than they originally thought.
Notes: Part 4 of 5. Read 1, 2, & 3
Final Day
On the surface, Nao thinks, everything seems normal, or at least some facsimile of normal, as they prepare for this outing. Despite both Akiyama and Shin's anxiousness to see their mother, although probably for completely different reasons, Akiyama continues to insist that they go to the aquarium.
“You should come with,” Akiyama says, “at least to the aquarium. We might as well have one real date together.”
Which is why, as Akiyama spends his time working on the laptop and Shin keeps reading her college textbooks, Nao very deliberately, and very much ignoring the warm flush that filled her face, creates three lunch boxes that look almost like mini-seascapes (except that the rice is not blue).
“They're kind of elaborate.” Akiyama murmurs when she's done.
“Ahh...” Yeah, it does seem excessive, now that she looks at the results. “I guess I got carried away. It's kind of nice being able to make fun things for other people.”
“That's fine.” Akiyama says, taking a final look at the lunch box she made for him-the one with the penguins-before she closes the lid and wraps it up. “At least we won't have to buy lunch when we're there.”
“True.” Nao says, a smile on her face.
Akiyama's face becomes a mask. This has to be difficult for him, Nao thinks. “Let's go,” he says.
“Why the aquarium?” Nao asks later, while Shin has his nose to the glass watching the amorphous jellyfish float in their dark tank. She admires their forms, completely organic and elegant, floating without cares or worry. Briefly she wishes the three of them could be like them. But then, she supposes, that would make them unable to think at all.
Akiyama shrugs. “Why not? I thought it would be a fun experience for him, and a pleasant way for us to spend some time together for once.”
She definitely does not object. Her hand reaches out for Akiyama's, and he takes it. “So it really is like a date then?” Nao asks.
He sighs. “Didn't we already agree on that?”
Shin sets the pace, going through the exhibits, somehow both rushing and stalling for time simultaneously. Akiyama would know his younger self best, Nao thinks. That's why he chose this activity because as much as Akiyama loved his mother, and as much as Shin wants to go home, these moments, these few days together, are something Akiyama never had, or at least never remembered.
And Shin, probably thinking or guessing, that returning home to his mother-as much as he wants to-means going back to a life where he never has a chance to do something like this.
“A coral reef?” Shin's eyes widen when he opens his bento, “complete with a shark?”
Nao grins and nods. Then she listens to a fifteen minute explanation taken from the exhibits, about how accurate and inaccurate each and every piece of all three bento boxes are.
“I was always a really quiet kid, I swear.” Akiyama says to Nao, as they leave the aquarium, “maybe he isn't me.”
Nao considers his words. “No, he's very Akiyama-like. You both really enjoy teaching others. Plus,” a warm feeling fills her heart, “when both of you open up, there's always a lot going on behind it.”
“What?”
At Akiyama's confused look, Nao realizes that perhaps she said something too much or inappropriate to the situation. “It's nothing...just forget I said anything.” Nao becomes very interested in her own lunch box, and in finishing the can of green tea before they leave the aquarium for good.
“I see...” Akiyama accompanies his response with a small smile, the one that always leaves her heart pounding just a little bit faster.
“Ahh...I think we should get going...”
The difficult part comes later in the afternoon, as they leave the aquarium, and they all have to face the important part of the day, and all the unspoken lies and truths that they've been telling each other. A quiet, sullen group of three they must make, walking through the park.
Nao breaks the silence. “Akiyama-san, would you prefer taking Shin-kun to visit your mother by yourself?”
Again, those piercing eyes, the ones that seem to dig into her brain and ask, “What do you know?” Nao doesn't look away this time, just gives the slightest nod.
“Do what you want.” Akiyama says, with a shrug that seems to take on the weight of the world instead of lifting it off.
“Nao-san, should come with us,” Shin answers less ambiguously. “Mom would like meeting her.”
Nao tries not to cry. She knows. Akiyama seems to know that she knows. But to Shin, who has not experienced all of Akiyama's life, or realized the steps that took him from the clever boy with a bright future to the current Akiyama, actually seeing his mother will hurt.
“She would.” The older Akiyama admits in a voice that Nao can barely hear.
And to Nao, who has made trying to understand her partner-in-crime and protector one of her current ambitions, it's apparent that though the grown-up Akiyama-her Akiyama-will never say so, he does have a definite preference.
“I'm going with you.” Nao says.
“That's fine,” Akiyama says. “We'll pick up flowers first.”
The Akiyama family grave is a nice place, Nao thinks. Peaceful, somewhat secluded from the rest of the cemetery, although a bit unkempt. She lets Akiyama go first, lets him mourn in peace. Is this the first time, Nao wonders, that he's visited his mother's grave? Watching him pray, Nao looks down.
“Akiyama-san...” She reaches for him, when he finishes.
He shakes his head. “I'm fine,” However, he does take her hand and squeeze it briefly.
When he draws back, Nao goes forward to give flowers to a woman she's never met, but who, in a way, she owes her life to. “Thank you,” Nao says quietly through her tears, “for raising such a wonderful son. I promise, I'll take care of him.” She wishes that she could have met Akiyama Michiko and say those words in person, that his mother had never suffered the fate she did.
The whole time, Shin stays in the background. “Hey!” he starts at first, “aren't we going to see mom? Why are we doing this first?”
As neither Akiyama nor Nao say anything, the possibility seems to occur to him. Nao's heart breaks, watching the painful realization dawn. Shin shakes his head.
“Shinichi,” Akiyama says, using his full name, “Five years ago, mom she--”
Not even the adult Akiyama can say the words easily.
Shin freezes and trembles at the same time, and Nao goes forward to-to comfort him? To shield him from what Akiyama is about to say? To hold him still in the face of the truth? She's not sure. But the moment her hands touch him, he jerks away.
“No! Get away from me! You're wrong! You're lying! I wanna go home.”
They get no more warning before Shin takes off.
“Shin!” Nao yells, doing her best to run after him in her skirt and heels.
Akiyama knows, the moment Shinichi runs off, that this is up to him. Nao's lack of natural athletic ability, plus her completely impractical outfit, mean that Shin could lose her by the first turn if he really wanted to.
Time matters now. But if Akiyama starts running blindly, then he won't catch up. Plus, it occurs to Akiyama, where he catches Shinichi matters as much as, if not more than when. Where would Shinichi go? Not to Nao's apartment, or to the aquarium. Home. Home to Shinichi would be that small apartment where he and his mother once lived. But it's been torn down, and he knows, talking to Nao, that Shinichi knows that already.
No.
Home for that Shinichi is not this time at all. It's eighteen years ago. His younger self knows that too, and perhaps has been thinking about how to get back. Time travel, as an impossibility, means that Akiyama has no clue to the theory or how to make it work. Then, he thinks of the story Nao told him. And then, he remembers an annoying habit he had as a child, one involving listening in on conversations
“You found him in a crosswalk?” He asks suddenly.
Nao nods. “It's just like he appeared out of nowhere.”
If Shinichi had listened to anybody, to the conversation between Nao and her father, or to the later one between Nao and himself, he must have come to a completely improbable but no less-likely conclusion: He's in that coma right now, and he needs to wake up somehow.
So, if Akiyama were in that situation, what would he do, and where would he go in order to ensure that he had the greatest chance of waking up and being in the right place? The lightbulb goes off, and the solution appears ahead of the actual step-by-step logical process.
“Where was the crosswalk where you found him?”
Nao tells him, and Akiyama takes off.
Just not exactly in the direction that Nao pointed him in.
His brain races alongside his body. The image of a hospital comes to mind. The one where his mother intermittently spent the rest of her life going in and out of, and the one where she finally--
It's not quite the closest one to the scene of the accident. But it's the one connected to his family. If he were sick or injured, he would have gone there.
Akiyama catches up to Shinichi outside the hospital building, just barely winded from his long run. Shin himself is nearly doubled over and breathing heavily. He can't run anymore. And to look closer at his face, his younger-self has been crying. It's too much for a kid, even if that kid is him.
“Yo.” Akiyama approaches his younger self the same way he would a scared animal.
“Go away!” Shinichi turns around to hide the evidence of his tears.
Akiyama shakes his head. “I can't.”
“This isn't real. Go away.”
If not for the fact that Akiyama can quite clearly feel the strong spring breeze hitting the sweat on his brow, or the fact that he can hear his heart pounding in his chest, he might agree that this whole thing must be a hallucination.
“I can't.”
“This is only a nightmare. Mom's alive, and I'm not a loser who becomes a criminal and a construction worker instead of going to a good school! I'm smart! I study all the time! This can't be my future!”
Akiyama doesn't know to agree or disagree. He knows his future, and what causes it. “She died,” he states it cold and distantly. “She died because the greedy preyed on her, and she couldn't bring herself to ask for my help. If I had known...I would have quit school in an instant. You know it too, what you would do to protect her.”
Shinichi stiffens, but he doesn't run.
“She never asked. Never gave any sign that she needed me to help her. And then one day, it was too late. Then I found them, the bastards who put her in that position and stole her life away, and I promised to take what mattered most to them. I destroyed them. I traded my previous life for three years in prison for fraud and a criminal record in order to avenge her. And I'd pay the same price again if I had to.”
Shinichi tries bravado. “I wouldn't have gotten caught.”
“I confessed.” Akiyama admits, “I wanted the world to at least see what these bastards did to ruin the lives of so many people, and give Mom a voice in court. But no, the newspapers were so impressed with my single-handed destruction of that company, that all the stories were about the genius con artist and not about what those bastards did that hurt so many people.”
“Some genius.” Shinichi's bitter tone echoes exactly what his older self feels, another annoying habit of his.
The click of Nao's heels on the pavement signal her arrival, as does the loud sound of her respiration.
“Akiyama-san, Shin-kun.” Her sputters and coughs ruin her attempt to look strict. “Don't run off like that.”
“It's okay.” Akiyama moves to reassure her. “Shinichi knows what happened. We're in the right place anyway.”
“Is this where you came after the accident.?”
“Should be. This is the hospital my family and I always went to.”
Nao nods. “Same here.”
“You're in there.” Akiyama says to his younger self, with certainty. Memories of the incident, long repressed and forgotten, come to the surface. “I can't tell you which room or which floor. But you're in there. Mom is with you,” he closes his eyes, “and a man carrying a little girl. I think, if you find them, you'll wake up.”
Shinichi nods.
What more can he tell his former self? Akiyama knows from his experience, that he won't remember any of this. Anything said would be for his own benefit. He has to try one thing though. “You're going to get into Teito University, and you'll even go to graduate school. On September 24th, during your second year of graduate school, take that day off and spend it with Mom. And when she tells you that nothing is wrong, don't believe her. Don't let her go.”
“I won't.” Shinichi vows.
Akiyama still knows what's going to happen. As much as he would love to wake up tomorrow with his mother still alive and proud of him, he doesn't have enough of Nao's foolish trust to actually believe that the past is so easily molded and changed. “And if it does happen,” Akiyama adds, “Don't waste time blaming yourself or Mom. Just do what you have to do.”
His younger self can only nod.
Nao-who has remained silent for a while-walks forward and embraces Shinichi. Lucky kid, Akiyama thinks. She leans down and whispers her parting words into his ear, too low for Akiyama to successfully eavesdrop. Shinichi grins when she's done though. “It's time to go home, Shin-kun.”
Shinichi walks to the hospital entrance. “Sayonara, Nao-san, Akiyama-san.” Everything seems to have ended until Shinichi thinks to add on: “Akiyama-san, if you mess up my chances with Nao-san, you're going to be really sorry!” as he walks into the hospital.
Akiyama watches amusedly as Nao does her best to hold back her laughter.
“What did you tell him?” Akiyama asks.
Nao looks up at him, that warm, scary, wonderful smile on her face that makes him consider saying and doing some very un-Akiyama-like things to her. “Do you really want to know, Akiyama-san?”
“You're going to tell me anyway.”
Her hands go to her bosom, “I told him that he should be very proud of the type of person he's going to become.” That adorable blush comes up her cheeks, and Akiyama has a feeling that she's not telling him the whole story. He considers the possibility of teasing it out of her, and the fun times that could result. After all these months of trying to keep his life with Nao and the Liar Game separate from his daily life, it suddenly seems completely futile to even try.
“Oh? The type of person who appeals to Kanzaki Nao?”
“Well, yes, I guess if you want to paraphrase.” She looks away, almost ready to run. “Akiyama-san?” Nao asks, changing the subject. “Do you think Shin-kun will be all right?”
His answer comes with one-hundred percent certainty. “He'll be fine.”
To ten-year-old Shinichi, navigating the dim corridors of the hospital, somehow invisible in the nurses, patients, and visitors who move around him. He guesses that's a good thing, if only because he's sure that someone would try and stop him from exploring.
As he searches, the echoes of the older Akiyama's story goes through him. He still thinks he could have done better, that he would have kept his mother alive, that he would have had his revenge without giving up his dream, but he understands now, a little bit, how that Akiyama came to be.
And then Nao's final words echo through his head: “Akiyama-san is a strong, smart, kind, and brave person. He doesn't turn his back on the people who need his help, even when it would be easier for him. And he never runs away, even from near-impossible odds. You should be very, very proud of the person you're going to become.”
His own self lies in the center, nigh unrecognizable when it's hooked up to machines determined to track and stabilize every single one of his vital signs.
He finds the room. His mother, kerchief tied around her dark hair, sits at his side holding his hand and crying, and in the distance, as his future-self said, a man in glasses-Kanzaki-san before he got old and sick-carrying a little girl. Nao-san in the present day. The family of the woman who gave him this chance to live at the cost of her own life.
Shin tries not to think of that. Nor think about the fact that his mother, who looks so worn out from this strange perspective, will die before he's had a chance to become successful enough that she doesn't have to work so hard. Nor about the fact that the old man will become sick while his daughter is still in school. He doesn't mind thinking that the little girl will grow up to be Nao, and that for all his future-self did wrong, she seems to like him okay.
Shin shakes his head, that's the future and it might not even be real or fixed. In the present, only one thing matters: They're all waiting for him.
He lies down, and wakes up.
Everything hurts. His eyes hurt, his head hurts, his skin hurts, even his hairs hurt. The last thing he remembers is the sight of the car coming to hit him, the sound of a woman's voice shouting, and the feeling of pavement beneath him, everything else consolidates into a slight feeling that he forgot something important.
“Mom? Where am I?”
“Shinichi!” Her arms surround him, and he suddenly feels like he's been away for a while. “You're alive. Thank goodness. I thought you were-don't run out in the street like that!” He blinks, and finally focuses in on her face, and the tears tracking down her cheeks.
Trying to look at anywhere besides his mother's crying face, Shinichi notices the man in glasses standing in the background. “Who's that?”
The man in glasses steps forward, and Shinichi can see the little girl he carries in one arm. “Someone who is very glad to see you alive, young man.”
“Mom, is this a new boyfriend?” Shinichi never really likes any of the other dates that his mom occasionally has, but somehow having this solemn man as a father and a baby sister to go with doesn't seem horrible.
His mother shakes her head, with tears in her eyes. “I don't think so, Shinichi. It's still just going to be the two of us,” she turns to the man in glasses though, “Thank you, Kanzaki-san. You've been more than gracious, considering everything.”
Kanzaki closes his eyes. “Akiyama-san, I couldn't have done anything else to honor Natsuko's act. Please take care of yourself and your family. And you,” he voice grows stern as he looks at Shinichi, “take care of yourself and grow up to be a good man.”
“Yes, sir.” Shinichi looks at the child in Kanzaki's arms, and the little girl stares back at him from her perch. “What's her name?”
“Nao. She just turned one about a month ago.”
“Nao-chan, huh?” he smiles, “That's a nice name.”
Kanzaki smiles. “Nao-chan, can you wave to Shinichi-kun?”
The little girl gives a smile and a shy little wave, before she buries her face in her father's sweater.
Shinichi smiles back as he lays back down to go to sleep. Everything seems to be about right.
He is where he's supposed to be.