I felt an urgent tug on my sleeve. Akari was grabbing me by the arm. I stopped walking and turned to face her; we were standing right beneath one of the few streetlights on the road, so I could see Akari’s face perfectly. Then I gasped. She was looking pensively down at the sidewalk with tears streaming down her cheeks.
“I can’t do it…” she sobbed, squeezing my arm so hard that I felt her nails dig into my skin through my coat. “I’m sorry, Kanae-kun… I just can’t…”
“Wh-what do you mean, you can’t? Can’t do what?” I asked, desperate. I had no idea why she had stopped me or why she was crying, which made me start to freak out a little bit. She looked up at me and, with tears in her eyes, made a heartrending plea:
“Do we really…have to save my brother…?”
It took a few moments for the implications of her words to sink in. You could have given me a million guesses as to what was going to come out of her mouth, and I never would have gotten anywhere close. My mouth hung open in disbelief as I tried and failed to twist my tongue into syllables. Eventually, I started feeling a little bit lightheaded. I could no longer say for sure whether or not my feet were still touching the ground.
“Wh-what are you talking about?” I sputtered. “Of course we do, don’t we…?”
“But…” she sulked, gripping the collar area of her sweater with her free hand. She was behaving almost like a pouting child.
“What’s gotten into you, Akari? This is your only brother we’re talking about…”
“I know, but I just can’t do it… I don’t want to save him, Kanae-kun. I don’t even want to be in the same room as him ever again…”
“I mean, fair enough, but this is life or death here. If we don’t do something, he’s literally going to die. Don’t you get that?”
“I do, but… I just… Ugh, I don’t know…”
Akari kept on shaking her head, refusing to make eye contact with me. She looked fragile, even paranoid. Like she was convinced something or someone was out to get her, and she was begging me to rescue her from her peril. From my perspective, I couldn’t understand what she was so afraid of. Akari hadn’t yet expressed her raw emotions in a coherent enough manner for me to wrap my head around.
“Why don’t you want to save Akito?” I asked.
“I mean…because he’s a horrible person…”
“How so?”
“He like…hits me, and kicks me, and stuff…”
“Wha—” I gasped, praying that I’d simply misheard her. “He…actually beats you?”
“Yeah…” she nodded, then began to elaborate, slowly, in a stammering voice.
She told me all about how he was constantly throwing things at her, pulling her hair, and even fractured a bone in her hip. How he would use her as his personal gofer, day in and day out. How he stole all of the money she’d been saving up while working her butt off at her part-time job. How he even suggested she get a job at a strip club to earn it back…
With every word that came out of Akari’s mouth, my blood boiled hotter with contempt for Akito, and my empathy for Akari grew deeper. These two sharply distressing emotions overlapped like a massive pair of scissors, snipping away at my heartstrings. Akari was making a cry for help, and as much as I wanted to just cover my ears and block out the sound, I could never do that to her. The more she explained what had been going on, the more a third emotion began to build up inside of me: regret. Regret for two years ago, when I packed up my bags and left Akari alone here in Sodeshima without a second thought. Why hadn’t I realized sooner that something had to be wrong? Why had I never once called to check up on her? I slammed my inner conscience with interrogative questions like these, but it didn’t have any good excuses. If I had simply stayed by Akari’s side, I could have been around for her when…
“So now do you see?” Akari cut in, interrupting my train of thought. “Please, Kanae-kun… Can’t we just…hold off on saving my brother and let the universe decide…?”
I had no comeback for that. After coming all this way, I was now starting to have misgivings at the very last minute. Should I save Akito, or should I not? When the Rollback first began, there was no doubt in my mind what the answer to that question should be. But back then, I didn’t know then about all of the things he was doing to Akari. All of the horrible, sickening things. Lest we forget, Akari was my best friend here, not Akito, and she herself was essentially telling me that her brother deserved to die.
And yet…surely there was still room in Akito’s heart for change if we gave him a chance at a second life, wasn’t there? If we let him die, he’d never have an opportunity to redeem himself. There were an infinite number of ways his life could change from this point on, both for the better and for the worse, and to let him die now would mean extinguishing each and every one of those possibilities. Was I really prepared to be his judge, jury, and executioner here? I couldn’t say.
So what was I to do? My choices were to act against my best friend’s wishes as an abuse victim or let a deeply flawed man die. At that precise moment, I admit that the scales weren’t tipping in one direction or the other. I was at a loss, and the pressure of the impending decision was starting to stress me out.