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Thirteen hours and this so-called game will be over.
Twelve hours and Kanzaki will likely have one of the worst hours of her life, while Fujisawa has one of the best.
Eleven hours and Akiyama will be absent from the scene. He’ll need to take advantage of the narrow window where his vulnerable mark will finally cave. That he’ll avoid having to witness Kanzaki’s likely breakdown serves as a dubious bonus.
Speaking of Kanzaki, she slouches against the wall, fitfully asleep for the past hour or so. The worried expression hasn’t left her face since she received her notification about the game’s end. Akiyama wavers between feeling guilty at her distress and almost relishing it. After all, with his help, in about fourteen hours, she’ll have left her teacher in the exact state that caused her to desperately reach out to a former con artist in the first place. A small bit of panic seems a fair price.
Akiyama half-believes in Kanzaki’s honesty. Whatever greed she has, she’s managed to hide from him well enough over the past few weeks. If she has any starry-eyed dreams of what to do with her share of the winnings, she doesn’t volunteer the information, and Akiyama won’t ask. He keeps their conversations to the logistical necessities—the details of spying, the shift changes, the clean up that’s part of this room’s rent—or to give Kanzaki a needed morale boost, to keep her on the right side of the line between usable discomfort and blind panic.
Anyway, whatever Kanzaki chooses to do with her share of the money fifteen hours from now will be of no concern to him.
Across the street, Fujisawa slouches against his safe. His head droops off as if to sleep and then suddenly jerks upward again. He could lose that 200 million at any time, and that window narrows. Akiyama can practically see the former teacher’s thought process every time that tired head turns towards that watch strapped left wrist like it’s a beacon of salvation. A part of Akiyama that’s not as dead as it should be almost regrets what will happen to that man.
Almost. Akiyama has verified with his own eyes and ears who between Kanzaki and her teacher acted as the aggressor and who had been the victim. Fujisawa took advantage of the trusting relationship he’d had with a former student to steal her money. Kanzaki would have left her teacher—or any other opponent—alone had she been allowed. Akiyama’s work here only rights one small wrong. That’s enough to keep his conscience clear regarding Fujisawa’s fate. It should be anyway.
Akiyama has left similar people in worse situations.
Kanzaki will wake up soon—soonish, anyway—and Akiyama will try and do his best to keep her wilting spirit up. He’ll take his leave at the usual time and set his plan into action. The game will end during Kanzaki’s shift—fortunate timing there. Akiyama will return right when Fujisawa expects an agent from the shady organization that pit a girl and her favorite teacher against each other. He’ll strike. Kanzaki will safely get her money back, and then some.
If Kanzaki ends up a bit less honest in the end, maybe that’s an acceptable evil.
As for himself, Akiyama will take the agreed upon share. He and Kanzaki will go their separate ways.
And then…
And then…
For as clearly as Akiyama can map out what will happen in the next several hours, the future beyond blurs into the same gray haze it has been since the Shuuei Group’s fall became official. The money he’ll get from the game is just paper. It doesn’t matter. It can’t change anything important. He’ll go back to the room he’s rented and stay there. Probably, he’ll search for work until he finds someone willing to hire an ex-con for cheap. It’s the same plan he had before Kanzaki ran into him and unwittingly provided him with a few weeks of—not quite clarity, but a less opaque fog.
If he didn’t think Kanzaki would press him for an explanation, Akiyama might even thank her for that.
Akiyama keeps his gazed fixed on Fujisawa. His prey has started to grow restless, and Akiyama watches him leave the room briefly. He’ll return in a few minutes, coffee mug in hand as he tries to keep himself awake and vigilant for those few, last vital hours. It’s likely that, in this moment, Fujisawa’s thoughts parallel Akiyama’s almost perfectly: The game will be over soon, and the money will be safe with the person it belongs to. Only the details differ. The number of hours that constitute ‘soon’. The person the money belongs to.
In fourteen hours, their thoughts might align again: What next?
What next, indeed.
A glance over at Kanzaki indicates she’s still sleeping, still worried, entirely unaware of her impending change of fortune. She’ll get her money, and so long as she doesn’t think too hard about it, she'll get to keep a reasonably clear conscience as well, the best of both worlds. Kanzaki didn’t want to swindle her teacher; she just wanted her money back. It was the con artist who insisted she take the full amount.
No, Akiyama won’t feel guilty for her impending panic.
It’s only if Kanzaki happens to ask what will happen to Fujisawa that she’ll even realize that she’s making a choice.
She probably won’t. Only a small part of Akiyama that isn’t quite dead even wants her to. Because if she asks…
If she asks, she might…
“Oh!”
Suddenly, Kanzaki is awake and Akiyama finds himself pulled back to the real world to deal with the girl who will be the one winner in this situation.
“I guess I fell asleep. How long was I out?”
Akiyama checks the time. Twelve hours until the actual end of the game now. “Not too long. Just a couple of hours.” Any other day and he might tell Kanzaki to go back to sleep and keep her mental stamina up. But this day, she’ll be her most useful on edge. “It’s your turn to take care of breakfast.”
Her hollow, weary look asks a completely different question than the one she says out loud. “Same as last time?”
“If they have it.”
Kanzaki puts her shoes on. “I’ll be back soon.”
Akiyama watches Kanzaki’s back as she retreats out the door, and then turns his gaze back towards their target.
Twelve hours, and the game will end.
And everything will be as fine as it can be.