#also me and my sister were like ''santa's sister definitely was in the nonary games! she maybe died there!''

[realboutfatalfury]

finally finished zero escape 999

[zecretsanta]

Fic: Not Quite Santa

To: @agentshilonglang​ From: @erisofimladris​

Soooo I couldn’t resist the Kurashiki angst and my first-ever Christmas story happened! I hope you enjoy this fic as much as I loved writing it, and Merry Christmas!

AO3 link

For the first time since their parents died, Aoi Kurashiki didn’t know how to be Santa.

It had always been easy. Akane would write a letter to Santa, Aoi would swipe it from the mailbox, and there would be something on there that he could afford, even if it wasn’t what she necessarily wanted most - even with her huge imagination and love of the unreal, she also understood that they were poor.

And now they weren’t poor, or at least they wouldn’t be for long now that Akane knew how to get the money necessary to run that game again, which meant there was theoretically more of an opportunity for gifting. But Aoi couldn’t think of anything at all.

Whenever he tried to think of Christmas, all his mind returned to was the story Akane told him he’d say in the future, the one about the two Santas - the white-robed Santa killing the one in black, the black-robed Santa’s blood staining the coat a jolly red.

It gave a whole new meaning to the holiday, and after all, he was celebrating with a new Akane. In the last month, he’d barely recognized the Akane who he grew up with who believed in everything and everyone. Now, she only believed in a thin thread tying them to the future where every little thing they did for the next nine years could make her live or die. Everything from the setup of Building Q in Nevada to getting to Nevada to his acting skills and her hair bound in a pair of hair clips, not quite stars and not quite flowers, with little circles on the ends.

No matter how hard he wished for the old Akane back, for them to both live their lives without ever knowing something called a Nonary Game existed, Aoi didn’t believe in any kind of Santa. It was hard enough to believe that his sister stood in front of him alive (well, mostly) after what happened last month.

She hadn’t left a letter for Santa this year, and it wasn’t like what some of the other kids in school said when their little brothers and sisters figured out Santa wasn’t real. Aoi had no doubt that if not for what happened on the Gigantic last month, there would be a letter waiting for him, asking for a stuffed animal or a dollhouse or a pet.

The dollhouse wouldn’t have been a bad idea before the Gigantic, but now Akane was so attached to the doll Junpei gave her that she hardly let it out of her sight. Not to mention it was a creepy little thing that definitely didn’t belong in a cutesy dollhouse - just like all the babble about morphogenetic fields didn’t belong spewing out of the mouth of his little sister.

Pets were off the table as well, now that they’d need to move around. There was no good way to keep a pet if they might need to move to a different continent in the blink of an eye; they were technically still on the run from Hongou and his goons at Cradle Pharmaceuticals, and the last thing they needed was a snafu at customs or something else to part Akane from another thing she’d get attached to.

Without any further guidance, Aoi was lost. He didn’t know how to do Christmas without letters to Santa and presents under a tree.

And so, he didn’t get a tree. Akane never mentioned it, and neither of them pointed out the spot in the small apartment where they were staying that would be perfect for a well-decorated tree. He wasn’t sure he could even get her help in decorating, and they didn’t need a bare pine tree in the living room to remind them of yet another thing that had been ruined.

After a few days of hearing Christmas carols in the streets and garlands strung over shop windows, however, Aoi felt something missing. They had to do something for Christmas; they couldn’t let this be something else Hongou took away. Even without a tree, even without Santa, there had to be something he could do to commemorate the holiday.

He found himself in an American store one day after school, looking for something Christmas-y that wouldn’t bring up any old memories. A bit of an escape from all that had happened, something to lighten the mood of an apartment that felt more like a funeral home than an actual home some days.

In one of the aisles close to the end, he found something he’d seen, but never bought before - a gingerbread house kit with pre-cut pieces (no need to use the oven, the idea of which scared Akane for good reason), two gingerbread people and icing and candy to decorate. None of his friends ever had gingerbread houses before, and after their parents died and money was tight, it was hard enough to afford a small tree and Akane’s present without buying extras. Now, though, they didn’t have to worry about money. It would be no problem.

The kit sat unopened on their one and only table for a few days. Aoi wondered if Akane would even be interested until he found her sitting at the table on Christmas Eve, legs crossed, brow furrowed, trying to affix the roof to the walls with white frosting.

Aoi didn’t say a word. He just got a little closer, then closer still, until he could reach the walls. He gingerly put his hands on them, startling her into looking up and meeting his eyes. She lost her grip on the left roof tile, which fell in a sticky mess on the table.

“It’s okay,” Aoi said, picking it up and applying a new line of white frosting. “Here, you get this end, and I’ll get that end.” Prepared to hold both on his own, he was surprised when Akane leaned in, holding the slabs of gingerbread together.

They stayed in silence, not meeting each other’s eyes until more than the necessary time had passed and Aoi gingerly removed his hands. The roof stayed, and Akane’s hand pulled the rest of the kit closer in. She picked up one of the two gingerbread people and the white icing they’d used to make the roof stick together and drew some jagged lines (impressively straight, considering her dexterity still wasn’t what it had been before) on the head.

“Is that me?” Aoi asked.

“Yeah,” she said, the first sound he’d heard from her all day. That wasn’t like her, but after their fight the other day about forgetting and remembering and moving on, he’d almost forgotten the sound of her voice not angry.

“Want me to make you, or…?” His words trailed off as she put down the white icing and picked up the black, drawing a vague outline of pants on the cookie’s legs.

“You can start the sides,” she said, gesturing to the white icing and the assortment of colorful candies still on the tray.

Turning his attention away from the people, although he did notice Akane giving him a tank-top of sorts that he’d never wear, he looked down at the picture on the box. He noted the white windows drawn in and the small candy doorknob and the lane of candy running into the door. Without any further guidance, he tried to mimic the picture as best as he could, but the windows came out a little crooked and the door snapped just a tiny bit as he opened it, and he popped the snapped-off bit into his mouth before Akane could notice.

He tried to peek at Akane’s work along the way, but she hid the gingerbread people so well as she hunched over them that he simply worked on the rest of the house until it was time for him to put something together for dinner and try to get her to eat. He looked over at her a few times as he cooked, realizing that as she put the figures down and started to touch up his work on the house itself, the corners of her mouth twitched like she might smile.

Dinner was, as usual, a desolate affair; although there was finally enough food for both of them to eat, most of his time was spent trying to convince Akane to actually put food in her mouth. Whatever he ate didn’t taste good; he could barely even remember what they’d eaten as he did the dishes and Akane returned to her gingerbread project. She leaned over it so closely that he didn’t try to approach again, instead retreating to his room, frustrated.

Part of him wanted to run back in there and try to clarify what he’d meant in their argument the other day, that he knew she needed to remember and speak about every detail to stay alive, but he needed a life where the Nonary Game wasn’t the only thing in the world. The tension of it all ran hot under his skin, but he didn’t need her reminder that something was boiling inside her as well.

Aoi sighed. He was supposed to be the big brother, and he was the one who would have to do everything he could to help Akane. She was still a kid – hell, two months ago, she’d have still sent a letter to Santa even though she was almost a teenager. Now if only Santa would write to her instead, if only he could use that to explain…

Sliding into his chair, Aoi grabbed a piece of paper. Even if it didn’t help, it couldn’t hurt.

“Dear Akane,

I’m sorry,” he began, aware that he’d apologized to her so many times for things he hadn’t done over the last couple of weeks that it was starting to annoy her, “that you’ve had such a hard year. You are very good, no matter what anyone says.”

It felt so trite that he nearly tore the note in half, but it wasn’t like he could think of anything better.

“I didn’t receive a list from you this year, and the things you want cannot come true right now.” They would be real in Building Q in nine years, on the day that silly boy from her class who gave her the doll that got her killed in the first place would save her life. “It is beyond my magic to move the time closer.”

He sighed, pushing the paper away. It was almost too late to do anything at all, and it wasn’t a proper Santa’s letter without a gift. Exasperated, he got up and shuffled into the hallway and then to the living room, where he found the completed gingerbread house sat with the Akane and Aoi gingerbread figures standing outside by the door, with no sign of his sister.

Now that he had the chance to get a good look at the gingerbread Akane, he could see that she had drawn the outfit she described to him that she would wear in Building Q. It seemed overwhelming for her to get out all at once, but she did describe the purple dress with the black pattern (looking more like blobs of icing here, but still), the striped socks and brown boots, the stripes on the sleeves and there was even a little red and blue spot on the wrist that was probably supposed to be the watch (Aoi rubbed his wrist; he could still feel his sometimes). In her hair, there was a little pin that wasn’t quite a star or a flower.

A sudden pang of guilt swept over Aoi. He tried to get Akane to think about things other than what had happened, but he probably took it too far. She did need to get things out, after all, and he was supposed to be there to listen to her. He was supposed to be a lot of things, he thought angrily as he looked down at the cookie that could crumble as easily as his sister’s life.

Suddenly, an idea came into his head. A way to show Akane that he was listening to her, that he’d seen and understood that in nine years he was going to wear a silly-looking tank-top and black pants and she was going to wear the dress with a shirt under it for some reason even though she hated being too warm and couldn’t get cold nowadays, and the whole rest of the outfit that made no sense.

Aoi hurried out into the cold, hoping the nearest convenience store wasn’t closed. They were in this thing together, no matter what. And while there was no letter from Santa telling Aoi what Akane wanted, he knew exactly what she needed.

When he got back, present in tow, he rummaged through his papers until he found the note, then added a final line: “In the meantime, I hope this helps. - Santa” He set it under the gingerbread house, slipped the present through the hole in the door, and went to sleep.

Unlike in previous years, he wasn’t awakened at the crack of dawn by a squealing sister. The sun was in the sky already and he could smell the gingerbread house as he rolled out of bed. Belatedly, he realized there was no tradition for finding presents by the gingerbread house. Would she even know it was there?

He made his way into the kitchen, slippers sliding along the floor. There were no squeals of happiness, no clatter of excited footsteps. Akane sat at the table facing the gingerbread house, the little door open, her hand inside before she pulled his present out into the light.

In her hand lay a pair of hair clips, not quite stars and not quite flowers, with little circles on the ends.

She turned around, meeting Aoi’s eyes as he stood in the hallway. He was frozen silent, unsure of what to say. Had he done the right thing? The wrong thing? The kind of thing that would make her live in her own world again until he could pry her out?

A small smile spread across her face as she looked at the hair clips. “Merry Christmas, Santa,” she said, and for the first time in a month, she sounded like herself.

“Merry Christmas,” he replied, finally stepping into the room, warmed by the thought that he might be able to pull off the good Santa from her story, after all.

[edogawatranslations]

999: Alterna (1) - Part 3, Chapters 8-9

Table of Contents | Previous: Part 3, Chapters 6-7

Chapter 8

I doubted my ears.

“No way.” Despair assaulted me from within. The theory I had so confidently crafted crumbled beneath me.

“But Junpei, your reasoning isn’t wrong,” Lotus added.

Unable to understand what she meant, I tilted my head. “...What do you mean?”

“My daughter was a Stage 3 patient of the disease.” Lotus stared emptily into space. She had a somber expression on her face. “She caught it nine years ago, just like June and that incompetent imp over there. ...If she’s alive, she would be about your age.”

“...Did she die?”

Lotus nodded, her gaze still empty. “Probably...”

“Probably?”

“She vanished. Right after she recovered from the disease.”

“Huh?”

What did this mean? I thought that her daughter had died from Angel Fever, but I realized now that that wasn’t the case.

“Do you remember the string of child disappearances in the city nine years ago?”

After Lotus mentioned it, the memories of the case popped into my head. “Sixteen boys and girls suddenly went missing one night, right?”

All of them unexpectedly returned two days later, so the case didn’t make a large splash in the media. But since the kids who disappeared were around my age, it left quite an impression on me.

I continued, “When questioned, every single one of them claimed that they were captured by aliens or something.”

Because all of the kids came back unharmed, the police investigation ended without reaching a proper conclusion. It’s likely that the truth is still shrouded in darkness to this day.

“All of them were unharmed? No, that’s a blatant lie.” Lotus pursed her lips, and a look of anguish spread across her face. “My daughter disappeared that same day. But she never returned home.”

Lotus choked up before she could finish her last sentence.

“Did you speak with the police?”

“Of course! But they wouldn’t listen to me at all. I suspect it was because I worked in the nighttime entertainment business, and was a divorced single mother living with her only daughter. They kept telling me without mincing words, ‘Aren’t you the reason she disappeared?’”

Her eyes overflowed with tears, which soon began streaming down her face.

“She wouldn’t disappear of her own volition. She was a good girl. There’s no way she would run away and abandon me. I decided I couldn’t rely on the police, so I hired a detective to thoroughly investigate the whereabouts of my daughter, and to look into the other 16 kids who had disappeared the same day. I thought there would definitely be some kind of connection.”

“Did you figure anything out?”

“The other kids had all been patients at the same hospital at some point. My daughter wasn’t any different. She was hospitalized there when she caught Angel Fever.”

“What?!”

“After looking into it even further, I discovered all of the kids had Angel Fever. Not just that, but they all reached Stage 3.”

I couldn’t help but feel astonished. “None of that was reported in the news. Did nobody realize?���

“It didn’t take much effort to find out. I don’t think the media was ignorant of the fact. I think there was a gag order in effect. There must have been some powerful forces at play. I wonder if that’s also why the police investigation was cut short.” Lotus continued her confession, letting out the sediment that had collected in her heart over all these years. “After she disappeared... I lost my will to live.”

After saying those words, Lotus started rubbing her right wrist. I hadn’t noticed before due to her many accessories, but she had an array of scars left behind from cutting her wrist.

“...I just wanted to feel at peace. But every time, I failed. When I would get carried to the hospital, the doctor would always say ‘You again?’ with a sigh. I’m clumsy with everything, so I wouldn’t end up dying no matter how many times I tried... Then I met a girl at the hospital. She looked like my daughter... She was quite a strange girl.”

Lotus said that she couldn’t fall asleep, so she snuck out of her hospital room and went to go take a walk in the garden. That was when she saw the girl. The girl was around high school age, and she was crouching under a large ginkgo tree, weeping.

“What’s wrong?” Lotus walked up next to the girl and asked.

The girl looked away and repeatedly said, “I don’t want to die. I don’t want to disappear from this world.”

“Since the hospital housed many patients with terminal cancer, I thought she was one of them. She was the complete opposite of me. I only thought about how much I wanted to die and disappear, but she seemed completely devoted to the idea of surviving to the bitter end. If it were possible, I would have traded my life for hers. She taught me about the feeling of joy that comes from waking up every morning and realizing you’re still alive. About how she only then realized how happy it was to have a healthy body. That moment was a truly enlightening experience. It was then that I made up my mind. I knew my daughter probably didn’t exist in this world anymore. But I couldn’t keep crying over it. I had to continue living, living the life that my daughter couldn’t.”

Lotus wiped the tears off her cheek with the back of her hand, and after catching her breath, she started smiling bashfully. “I’m sorry. I’m such an idiot for going off on a rant about myself in a place like this. All of this was just one of Auntie’s crazy made-up stories. Please forget everything I said.”

Following a hearty sniffle, she said, “Now, let’s get back to looking for that key.” Her voice was tinged with a forced sense of joy.

“What happened to the girl you met under the ginkgo tree?” I asked.

Lotus shook her head. “She gave me the will to live. I couldn’t bear to leave without thanking her, so I asked at the hospital reception desk about her, but they couldn’t find any patient who matched her description. Since she looked just like my Nona, I used a photo and went around asking, but I didn’t have any luck.”

“...Nona?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Nona’s the name of my daughter. I love the song ‘Sukiyaki’ - have you heard of it?”

“That Japanese hit by Kyu Sakamoto?”

“Yes. Since Kyu Sakamoto’s name in Japanese contains the character for ‘nine,’ I decided to name my daughter Nona.”

I tilted my head in confusion. I didn’t get it.

She continued, “It’s Latin. The prefix for nine.”

Lotus dived into a thorough explanation. The prefix for one in Latin is “uni,” as in unicorn. Two is “bi,” as in binary numbers. Three is “tri,” like for trio or triple or triangle. Afterwards, there’s “quadri,” “quinque,” “sex,” “sept,” and “octo” is for eight, like in octopus. And lastly, “nona” is for nine.

“Oh, is that why it’s called the Nonary Game?” I asked.

Lotus nodded. According to her, “nonary” meant “of nine things” or “relating to the base-9 number system.”

There were nine of us. Our time limit was nine hours. In order to ultimately escape from this ship, we needed to form a digital root of [9] and open the [9] door. Everything involved the number 9.

“I find it vexing that this game shares a name with my daughter,” Lotus said while peeking inside a nearby cupboard. “I’m going to live and escape this ship. I swore back then that I would live a long life for my daughter.” She continued with a smile. “Maybe the girl I met back then was Nona’s ghost... I wonder about that nowadays.”

“That’s enough with the ghost stories,” I replied with a laugh. Before I realized, the gloom in the air had lifted.

“I think there’s probably an afterlife,” Lotus said. “Even now, I sometimes sense my daughter staring at me. It feels very warm. I’m sure she’s looking over me... and always encouraging me, ‘Keep going, Mom!’ That’s why I can’t let her down.”

“We’ll survive and escape from here. For sure.”

Just as how Lotus was encouraged by that curious girl - Nona’s ghost? - I felt empowered after hearing Lotus’s story. It was too early to give up. For Lotus, for her vanished daughter, for Akane, for the others in this game, for my dad, for my mom, for my teachers, for my friends - for everyone I’m connected to, and for myself, I had to survive no matter what.

“...I found it.”

I heard Santa mumble from afar. I turned around and saw a green key flying at me in mid-air.

“Nice find, Santa.” I caught the key and stood up.

“Not like I was tryin’ to help. I got hungry and was lookin’ for somethin’ to eat,” he said.

As usual, he had a sour expression on his face and spoke brashly. But this time, I didn’t feel irritated. He was standing in front of the dishwasher. There couldn’t possibly have been any food there.

“Your sister must have it tough, having a rebellious big brother like you,” Lotus laughed.

“I don’t have one. A sister.”

“What? But earlier-”

“She died of Angel Fever,” Santa added brusquely.

He had on his usual poker face, but this time, I noticed it. I had thought him to be a completely cold-hearted person, but for a moment, I caught a glimpse of the deep sorrow in his eyes. That was most likely the real Santa. He probably was only pretending to be tough.

“Let’s go.”

I stood in front of the green door and inserted the key I received from Santa into the keyhole. The screen changed to display the question text.

~Question! What is the scaaaary disease that connects the nine of you together?~

Without hesitation, I typed in “Angel Fever.” My bracelet started flashing red, but I wasn’t concerned. After all, I had complete confidence in the answer.

After I hit the enter key, the door unlocked somewhat anticlimactically. Lotus whistled.

“Let’s move,” I said.

Right as I brought my hand to the doorknob, I heard the sound of a door opening from somewhere behind me. I turned around, but the entrance to the kitchen was closed.

Footsteps echoed.

The three of us exchanged glances. Someone else was here. Whoever it was walked slowly down the hallway before the kitchen.

“...Could it be Zero?”

Lotus braced herself for what was to come. Santa expressed an unusual look of concern.

The footsteps stopped right in front of the entrance to the kitchen. The three of us focused our gazes there. Before long, the doorknob turned-

“Jumpy?” Akane peeked her head through the open door.

“Ka-, no, June...?”

My mind couldn’t process the situation fast enough. I stood there paralyzed, staring back at her in shock.

“Jumpy! I’m so relieved-” Akane cut across the kitchen and flew over to me, on the verge of tears.

“H-Hey... June...”

While weeping like a child, she started patting my chest. From what I could tell, her fever had gone down.

“Leaving me behind like that... that’s terrible! I felt completely helpless.”

“Where have you been all this time?”

“What are you saying? I’ve been sleeping in bed. In Room 92.”

“What? But...”

“I dozed off for a bit... And when I woke up, everyone was gone. I was shocked.”

I still couldn’t fathom what had happened. At the very least, I could tell that Akane wasn’t lying.

“I’m glad. Now we can forge ahead without worry,” Lotus said.

As I stood there still in shock, Lotus put her own hand on the doorknob and opened the door.

“Let’s go, June,” I said.

Thinking everything through could wait. Right now, we had to focus on safely clearing this game. That should be the only thing on our minds as we moved forward.

“Yes!”

Akane’s reply was brimming with energy.

Chapter 9

...Nine years ago?

After listening to their conversations, I finally understood everything.

I can’t believe it.

Who is responsible for this mischief?

...God.

That was the only answer that entered my mind.

Next: Part 4, Chapters 1-2