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Asuna was almost asleep when her phone started buzzing. Dozens of texts flashed on her screen, seemingly everyone she knew suddenly texting her at once. She laughed to herself, rolling her eyes as she tried to read. Of course her friends suddenly wanted to talk when she was going to sleep.
She’d had a long day, she was exhausted, all she wanted to do was curl up under her blankets and sleep. She often joked with Rika that their sleep schedules were so messed up that once one started getting tired, the other would surely text them a few minutes later as they woke up.
That’s when her eyes focused on the texts she was getting, finally able to read over the words and process them, and suddenly she wasn’t laughing anymore.
‘Asuna wake up right now, Kazuto’s not answering.’
‘DON’T BE ASLEEP YET, HE HAS TO BE WITH YOU.’
‘PLEASE TELL US HE’S WITH YOU.’
‘Message me when you get this, Kazuto won’t answer anyone and Mom and I haven’t seen him.’
‘Kirito’s been acting off all day and now he hasn’t answered anybody for hours, do you know if he’s okay?’
‘Asuna, how’s Kirito?’
Her heart plummeted and she felt like all the air had been stolen from her lungs. This couldn’t be happening. Her fingers tapped frantically against her screen as she climbed out of bed. She dialled his number - she knew it off by heart - desperately hoping to hear his voice at the end of the line, and she did-
“Hey, you’ve reached Kazuto’s voicemail. Leave a message.”
-Just not the way she hoped.
Her blood ran cold. This couldn’t be happening. So she dialled the next number, Shino’s. She, thankfully, picked up immediately.
“Is he with you? Please, please tell me he’s with you right now,” Her voice was shaking, anxious.
“He isn’t,” Asuna felt her voice start to tremble, “I haven’t heard from him since this morning. When was the last someone heard from him?”
It sounded like Shino was moving around, then she sighed, “I think… I think Klein mentioned something about seeing him this afternoon. His sister too, you should ask Suguha. Ask her, she’ll know more than me and- Oh God, Asuna, what if this is it?”
Asuna didn’t even want to think about it, “I’ll call them now. He’ll be fine, I know he will be. He has to be,”
“Promise me he’s coming home safely tonight.”
“Of course, I promise,”
She hung up with extra weight on her shoulders. She’d made a promise she knew there was a chance she couldn’t keep, and every second he didn’t answer was another crushing weight. He had to be okay, he had to be. He couldn’t leave her, he wouldn’t leave her. After everything, this couldn’t be how he left them all.
She’d barely left the call with Shino when Suguha’s name lit up her screen, Asuna’s fingers trembled as she answered, her mind flashing with every single possibility of what the call would entail. She was calling to say he was safe and alive, she had to be. There was no way anything else would happen.
The girls didn’t even say hello.
“We’re looking everywhere for him, do you have any idea at all where he’d be?”
“No, no I don’t know anything, I don’t know why this is happening,”
“Asuna, sweetheart, this is Midori,” another voice came over the line, clearly scared but trying to hide it, “Has Kazuto said or done anything strange the last few days? Anything you can think of, anything at all.”
“I can’t remember,” Asuna felt a lump in her throat, swallowing hard, “He’s seemed so normal, I haven’t noticed anything at all. I’m sorry,”
She dropped to her knees, sobbing. Was she that oblivious? Had there been glaringly obvious clues in front of her the entire time? If she just focused on him more, paid a little more attention when he spoke, maybe there was something she would’ve understood - something that revealed his intentions or where he could possibly be.
Every conversation she’d had with him seemed to turn to fog the harder she tried to remember. They’d spoken, yes, but the details were blurry, her memory failing her when she needed it the most. What had he said? What had he said?
She tried to concentrate, blocking out the sounds from her phone. Suguha and Midori were talking out loud as they tried to work something out, which was helpful for them, but not so much so for Asuna. Just think. Think. Think harder.
What had their last conversation been? He’d been talking about Yui, their time in Sword Art Online, their marriage and their cabin. Their cabin.
“The cabin!” Asuna’s heart was racing as she grabbed her laptop, she’d never typed so fast in her life and yet it felt like she couldn’t type fast enough. If she remembered correctly, she still had the map data that Yui had made from the Ordinal Scale incident. All she had to do was work out where their cabin would be. That had to be it. Surely, that had to be it. She had no other ideas.
“Asuna? Asuna what’s going on, talk to us!” Suguha sounded like she was crying. Asuna couldn’t blame her.
Her heart dropped. No. No, this couldn’t be right. He wouldn’t, surely he wouldn’t-
“He’s at a bridge, I’ll text you the coordinates, I need to leave, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I need to make it in time,”
This couldn’t be happening.
Within seconds Asuna was running down her stairs, texting the coordinates to Suguha and dialling Tsuboi’s number, mumbling prayers under her breath that someone would be there in time. Maybe not her, maybe not his family, maybe even a random stranger passing by. But he needed someone to be there, they needed him to be there.
She agreed on a place to meet Tsuboi, throwing open her door and running into the night. She’d go as far as she could on foot, then hope against hope that Tsuboi’s car could take her the rest of the way. Twenty minutes wasn’t usually a long time, but now it felt like entire centuries.
She heard her own footsteps echoing around her as she sprinted, willing her body to let her push it just a little more, for a little longer. She had to reach him, her body couldn’t fail her now. She could rest once he was safe.
She hoped he’d be safe.
By the time she saw a familiar car pulling up beside her, her ankles were already aching. That damn physical therapy only worked so quickly.
“Asuna, breathe,” Tsuboi’s voice was somehow calm, stable as Asuna climbed into his passenger seat. She was already crying for him to drive faster, breath heavy and panting. She couldn’t wait any longer, she had to be there for him.
“I can’t!” She snapped, “I can’t breathe, I can’t do anything because Kirito could be dead by now and none of us even knew about it!”
He sighed deeply, focusing on the road, “You two beat Aincrad, you’ve beaten everything. He’ll beat this too, have a little faith. You know what he’s like,”
“I don’t know if I do right now,” Asuna felt guilt swirling around her gut. If she hadn’t known how bad it had gotten until he was about to end it, did she really know him like she thought she had?
“How do you want to do this? Are we both going to talk him down or will you be able to manage on your own?”
“I’ll try on my own, you need to update everyone on what’s going on, they’re all worried sick. Please check on Shino, I’m worried about her too,”
Klein nodded his head, fingers holding the wheel tighter, “Asuna?”
“Hm?”
“He’ll be fine. You know our boy, he’s always won before. I’m sure he’ll be fine,”
Asuna wasn’t sure if he was trying to convince her or himself.
She stared out the window. Street lights and houses flashed past her, the night silent and motionless, as if everybody else stayed in so as to not witness the scene Asuna was now dreading. There was a heavy feeling settling into the night air. There were houses with their lights still shining through open windows, bushes that clung to their last few leaves of the season, seemingly never-ending grey sidewalks, and then there was a bridge, and there was him.
“Klein, call the paramedics, right now,”
“Are you sure you can handle this?” Kelin shot her a concerned look as he slammed on his brake pedal.
Asuna shook her head, “Absolutely not, tell them to be as quick as they possibly can. We don’t have much time,”
She wasn’t too late. Seconds from it, but she’d made it in time. He was there, standing still on the wrong side of the guard rail, a dark figure looking over a life-altering drop. Thinking, contemplating. Planning.
“Kirito!”
Asuna practically fell out of the car, rushing to Kazuto’s side, screaming his name over and over again. He never looked up, never turned to her, never so much as acknowledged her existence - and Asuna realised they were all already too late. Years too late. This had been brewing inside him for so much longer than this night, this day, and nobody had noticed. For all the warning signs they were warned of, not a single one of them noticed anything.
She stood behind him now, her gaze locked on the back of his head. He’d still not turned around and - oh, God - what if he never turned around? What if nothing she could say would make him turn around? Or, what if he did, and neither of them knew how to face each other?
“Kirito, come back on this side, please,” Her voice was quiet, small, a lone voice in the vast expanse of night and thoughts and screaming in his head she wasn’t sure she knew how to shout over.
His voice was hoarse.
“Why?”
A single word felt like a blow directly to her heart, knocking all the air from her lungs and damn near crushing her. Why? After all they’d fought for, all he’d fought for, could he really not see a reason to it? Was he hurting so much that nothing would outweigh it?
“Because,” Asuna took a half-step closer to him, “Because we all need you here, Kirito,”
“That’s it,” His hands leant back on the railing, fingers digging into the cold metal, “That’s the problem. Kirito’s the hero of Aincrad, Kirito’s the guy who saved you, Kirito’s the guy everyone praises, where does that leave me? Kazuto didn’t do any of that. All I get is the nightmares and the guilt.”
Asuna bit her lip. The feeling was all too familiar. Oftentimes she felt like the woman she’d grown into in Sword Art Online had died along with all the world’s data the day the game was cleared. Her strength and bravery went unrecognised in the real world, but Asuna was left to deal with the trauma that life left behind. Her accomplishments were deemed fictional, while flashbacks held her firmly in that world’s grasp.
“I understand, at least a little bit,” she started slowly, “But I know that you were the one behind all your avatar’s actions. You are a hero, especially to me,”
She heard him scoff, “You think heroes fall asleep each night and remember all the people they killed?”
Asuna looked down at her feet cautiously, scared to take her eyes off him for too long.
“You did it because you had to-“
“I did it because I’m a murderer, Asuna!” He raised his voice, hands trembling against the railing and Asuna looked up at him, terrified.
“Step back over here,”
“Why? So I can live with this forever?”
Asuna didn’t know how to respond. Kazuto continued.
“I watched people I cared about die in front of me just because I was selfish and afraid. I killed people who had lives back here because of split-second decisions. I… I couldn’t get to you in time. I couldn’t stop him from hurting you. You have to live with that for the rest of your life and it’s my fault for not being better!”
Asuna stepped forward again. If he jumped, from this distance, she could grab his arm. She was stronger than him, just slightly, and Tsuboi was waiting in the car cautiously, updating the rest of the group on the situation and trying to not overwhelm Kazuto more than he already was. If he jumped, she could hold him long enough for Tsuboi to help them both back to safety.
“You got to me on time. I’m here now because you got to me on time. I got to you on time, too,” Asuna took a deep breath, “Ki- Kazuto , there are so many people that need you around, me, Yui, your family, our friends. Your mom and your sister are worried sick, all our friends were worried, I was worried,”
“Another reason I can’t be here anymore,” Kazuto shook his head as he spoke, “I can’t go back and have everybody know I failed, or that I was too much of a coward to go through with it.”
“You are not a coward for being alive,” Asuna felt her eyes stinging with tears she kept trying to fight back, “Do you have any idea how strong you are? You wake up and you deal with all those memories and thoughts, and you still keep living. You make friends and love people, you laugh and you cry and you live, do you know how strong you have to be to do all of that?”
“Clearly, not fucking strong enough!”
His voice echoed around them for a moment, then the night was quiet and still once more, his words weighing heavily on both their hearts. He didn’t feel strong enough to live anymore and Asuna would’ve given everything for him to feel okay again. Every part of her, body and soul, longed for him, for some sort of comforting normality again, and she was entirely unable to come to terms with the fact they would never have that again.
The reality of the situation was that they were both broken. Both were traumatised, both were a little too stubborn to admit they needed help and both were trying to fix each other before they could put themselves back together.
The reality was that, without question, they had felt more real and more hopeful and more alive when they were nothing but pixels and code and data existing in a virtual world they knew they couldn’t stay in. For those two years, they’d grown into warriors, fighters, lovers, parents. Everything they’d held so close to them, their very sense of identity, no longer existed in this world.
They didn’t really exist in this world.
Because who was Kazuto Kirigaya if he wasn’t Kirito, the swordsman clearing floors and rescuing his princess? Who was he if he couldn’t be a husband, a father, a hero, a beater? What was left of him when everything he’d accomplished was whisked away and erased, never to be spoken of again? How was he meant to live if the only life he’d truly had was supposed to be disregarded and forgotten about?
“We don’t exist anymore, Asuna,” he mumbled, “Here? This isn’t our world, these aren’t our lives anymore,” his gaze travelled to the ledge, then back up to the sky again. It was cloudy and starless, like it was about to rain. Maybe Asuna could say he’d slipped and fallen because of the wet ground.
Asuna’s voice was getting more desperate as the seconds ticked by, “But we’re living here, we ha-”
“You can’t call this living.”
And he was right.
None of this could truly be called living.
They were alive, they breathed and they ate and they slept, they laughed and they cried - they cried a lot - but it all contributed to survival, none of it could be classed as living. Living would be if they loved, if they adventured, if they felt, because they’d give anything to feel again. Living started once the numbness ended - but when would the numbness end?
Kazuto could only guess it would end after around thirty feet once he crashed against the hard cement. Thirty feet stood between him and the end of his life. Thirty feet, that was all it took. He could jump and in seconds he’d be free from the nightmares, the panic attacks, the guilt that plagued him day in and day out, the constant feeling that he was about to snap out of a dream and suddenly be back in that death game with no way out.
He leant forward ever so slightly, peering over the drop again. He could end everything right then and there. Nothing could stop him from falling forward. All it would take was letting go of the rail, then freefalling until everything stopped and he could finally be consumed by a blissful nothingness.
“Do it and I jump with you.” Asuna’s voice was firm, entirely serious and she tried to look over his shoulder. It was a low blow but she was desperate. She’d say or do anything she had to if it meant he didn’t jump - and if he did, she didn’t want to exist in a world he wasn’t in anymore.
They both fell silent. Deathly silent. Neither of them dared to speak, all too aware what they were saying could’ve been their last words. Kazuto’s breathing was ragged, his grip on the cold metal behind him tighter than before. Asuna’s gaze was focused solely on him. She moved a step closer, mentally preparing herself to have to reach and grab him. She prayed that The Lightning Flash’s reflexes could help her just once more.
“You can’t do that,”
“I would and we both know it,”
He looked at her, eyes in a cold, dead stare. His lower lip trembled and he shut his eyes tightly, his grip subconsciously loosening. For a split second, he looked terrified. He swallowed hard, inhaling for one last breath.
“I’m sorry.”
He threw himself forward. Finally. There was nothing to stop him anymore. His life would finally end. Kirito could at long last retire himself. His journey would really be over. The avatar would go unused now. He’d never log into another virtual world again. Never call Asuna his wife again, never see their beloved daughter again, never sit in the warmth of their log cabin and remember how safe it felt to be loved by them.
He’d never hear his sister’s laugh again. He’d never hear Rika taking playful jabs at him or Shino chiming in to continue it. He’d never order another bourbon on the rocks from Andrew only to get an iced tea and a playful scolding. He’d never watch Tsuboi fail miserably at picking up an NPC woman. He’d never help Ayano with taming a monster she was desperate to have.
He’d never hold Asuna again. He’d never spend another night sneaking her into his bedroom so they could lay there and take in each other’s warmth. He’d never get to call her his wife in the real world. He’d never have another chance to kiss her and hold her and touch her and - oh God what had he done?
The stories of people’s lives flashing before their eyes just before they died? Kazuto could now assure everyone they were true. Everyone he’d ever loved and been loved by flashed into the forefront of his mind, every memory that shaped him into the man he’d become burned into his vision. They’d be without him now. He was leaving so many people behind and there was nothing he could do to stop it. What had he done? What had he done?
This couldn’t be happening.
Then hands grabbed his wrists.
“Kazuto, no!”
Asuna.
Her grip was strong, her fingers curled around his wrists and she screamed as she reached one hand to grab him under the arm. She made sure she had firm hold of him, pulling him up until he could put his feet on the ledge again, even if reluctantly.
Once he was standing, she wrapped her arms around him, hands locked on the fabric of his shirt. They were both panting, adrenaline coursing through their veins. They’d made it. Kazuto was alive and breathing. Asuna was desperately clinging to him. His heartbeat was furiously working in overtime and Asuna could feel every beat in the palm of her hand.
She was never letting him go again.
Kazuto leant back, his lower back pressing against the railing, one hand reaching up to hold one of Asuna’s. He hung his head, sighing, then turned his head ever so slightly to look back at Asuna. The girl responded, completely closing the gap between them, pulling him against her chest and resting her head on his shoulder gently. They both breathed a deep sigh of relief.
She felt a teardrop roll down from Kazuto’s cheek onto her own and she finally let herself cry. He was going to come home, she was going to keep her promise.
“Are you ready to come back home now?” Asuna asked softly.
Kazuto shook his head, “Can’t. Everyone’s worried about me for nothing. I failed.”
“You didn’t fail.” Asuna kissed his shoulder, “You didn’t fail. You’re alive. We’ll take you home and you can get some rest, you need it.”
“But everyone’s gonna make a huge deal out of it,”
“We can tell them not to. We’ll tell them you’re okay and ask for them to give you some space until you’re ready.”
Kazuto slowly nodded, taking a shaky breath, “Asuna?”
“Hm?”
“Can you please help me onto the right side now?”
Relief washed over her. She stepped back, never once letting go of him, then helped him to pull himself back over the railing until he had both feet firmly on the sidewalk.
She threw her arms around him, hugging him as she cried into his neck, “I love you, I love you, please never scare me like that again. We’ll get you all the help we can, I promise. I’m sorry I didn’t notice,”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Kazuto hugged her tightly, “I didn’t want you to. I didn’t want anyone to be able to stop me. I’m sorry,”
They held each other for a long time, both trying to catch their breaths and process everything that had happened. They cried a lot, unable to stop themselves and frankly not caring. They’d been through so much in their short lives, at least crying meant they could feel something.
When Kazuto felt up to it, they returned to Tsuboi’s car, Asuna climbing into the backseat to sit with her boyfriend.
“Hey, are you doing okay?” The man asked awkwardly, then cringed at himself, “Obviously you’re not okay, we wouldn’t be here if you were okay. I guess I mean… Are you okay enough to go home? Sugu’s really missing you, man.”
Kazuto smiled weakly, squeezing Asuna’s hand, “I think I’m ready to really come home this time.
And for the first time in years, there was a small break in the numbness, and what he felt was hope.