Part 5: Calculated Ghosts
The high afternoon sun beat down on the quiet road as Akari pushed the alloy wheelchair past the remaining residential bends. The heavy atmosphere from Haruto's deduction about Kaito still hung thick in the air, but neither of them brought it up again.
Haruto sat motionless, staring blankly at the dirt path rolling beneath his footrests. Then, without turning around, he spoke, his voice quiet and flat.
"Pick a number."
Akari blinked, her footsteps slowing slightly. "What?"
"Pick a number between 1 and 100," Haruto said, his head still lowered. "Don't tell me what it is. Just hold it in your head."
Akari stared at the back of his crimson hair, caught off guard by the sudden pivot. In her head, she settled on a specific value—73. Smiling faintly to indulge the rare moment of distraction, she replied, "Alright. I have one."
"I'll find it in five questions," Haruto said. "You can only answer yes or no."
Akari raised an eyebrow. She assumed he would use a standard binary strategy, systematically splitting the set in half over and over. "Five? Haruto, cutting a hundred down to one usually takes closer to seven. The odds aren't really in your favor."
"Just answer," he murmured gently.
He didn't hesitate, firing off his first question. "Is the number odd or even?"
"Odd," Akari replied smoothly.
In an instant, Haruto mentally wiped away fifty even values, isolating strictly the odd possibilities.
"Question two," Haruto continued, his tone clinical. "Is it divisible by three?"
"No," Akari said.
Haruto immediately discarded every remaining odd multiple of three—15, 21, 27, 33, and the rest vanished from his calculations.
Akari's confidence actually grew a little. He hadn't asked a single thing about where the number lay on the spectrum. Without establishing a high or low boundary, he was leaving dozens of scattered numbers across the entire board. To her, it seemed like an inefficient way to narrow the field.
"Question three," Haruto rasped, completely ignoring her unspoken skepticism. "Is it greater than 65?"
"Yes," Akari answered, watching him closely.
The scope collapsed dramatically. The set was now strictly odd numbers, not divisible by three, and sitting above 65.
"Question four," Haruto said softly. "Is it less than..." He drew out the word, his voice lingering as he deliberately stalled mid-sentence, "...seventy..."
Right at that exact second, as the pause stretched out, Akari's eyelids twitched and a tiny, subconscious flinch caught at the corner of her eye.
"...five?" Haruto finished smoothly.
"Yes," Akari confirmed, trying to quickly smooth over her expression and keep her posture relaxed.
Haruto noted the reaction instantly.
Combining his mathematical filter with her physical tell, the data locked into place. Odd numbers above 65 and below 75 that were not divisible by three left only three real candidates: 67, 71, and 73. Her subtle flinch right when he hovered on seventy before hitting five signaled that her number was clinging right up against that upper boundary.
It was 73.
Akari stepped around to the side of the chair, looking down at his quiet profile. "You've narrowed it down, but you still have multiple options left and only one question. You still got a question—wanna risk it?"
Haruto didn't hesitate. "Yup."
He looked up slightly, his bloodshot eyes meeting hers through his fringe. "Question five. Is it 73?"
Akari stopped the wheelchair dead in its tracks.
She stared down at him, her eyes wide with genuine shock. 73. It was the exact number.
"How..." She trailed off, a breathless, astonished laugh escaping her lips before her expression softened into quiet wonder. "You didn't just calculate a range. You watched me."
"Math narrows the room," Haruto whispered, his bandaged hands resting limply in his lap. "People tell you which door they're standing behind."
Akari stood beside the chair, looking down at his small, exhausted frame. It was a simple game on a bright afternoon, but it laid his whole mind bare. Haruto didn't just rely on obvious formulas. He observed microscopic details, recognized patterns, and drew sharp conclusions from information others would completely overlook. Even when crushed under the weight of severe trauma and physical exhaustion, his analytical mind never stopped working.
"That's a terrifyingly sharp mind, Haruto," Akari said softly, stepping back behind the handles and resuming her push. "Just don't let it convince you that you can calculate every outcome in life."
Haruto didn't reply.
He didn't celebrate or boast about getting it right. The brief spark of intellectual distraction faded, leaving behind the heavy silence once more as the familiar outer gates of the Inazuma household appeared just ahead, looming quiet and vacant under the harsh midday sun.
"How..." She trailed off, a breathless, astonished laugh escaping her lips. "Haruto, there were still three or four numbers left in that bracket. How did you lock onto 73 on a blind guess?"
Haruto didn't look up, his posture completely relaxed against the seat. "I didn't calculate it all the way through."
Akari blinked, raising an eyebrow. "What do you mean?"
"You always pick 73," Haruto said plainly, his voice quiet and matter-of-fact. "Every time we've played this, you pick 73."
Akari froze, her jaw dropping slightly.
"The questions were just to narrow the range so it seemed believable," Haruto continued, his bandaged fingers resting still in his lap. "Once I got the boundary between 65 and 75, I already knew it was 73. When I paused on seventy... five and you flinched, it just confirmed you hadn't changed your habit today."
Akari stared at him, torn between utter disbelief and amusement. "So... you cheated!"
"I didn't cheat," Haruto murmured softly.
"You didn't solve it using the five questions!" Akari pointed out, crossing her arms as a small, genuine smile broke through her tired face. "Using my personal habits against me isn't exactly fair play, Haruto."
"You never made a rule saying I couldn't use information I already knew," he replied calmly, his tone completely even, without a single trace of embarrassment or smugness.
Akari shook her head, a quiet, breathless laugh slipping out. He had exploited a complete loophole, turning a simple logic game into a psychological read based on memory. For a fleeting, fragile minute, the crushing weight of the raid, the hospital, and the empty house seemed to lift from the quiet road, replaced by the familiar, comforting rhythm of their usual dynamic.
"You're unbelievable," Akari said softly, her smile lingering as she stepped back behind the wheelchair, disengaged the lock, and resumed pushing him forward.
Haruto fell silent once more.
As the wheels rolled smoothly over the cobblestones, the brief spark of lightness faded as quickly as it had arrived. The faint, quiet smile on Akari's face slowly vanished as the road bent around the final tree line.
Neither of them brought up the game again.
Up ahead, the familiar stone wall and high roof of the Inazuma household came into view, standing cold, dark, and silent beneath the bright afternoon sun. The heavy atmosphere returned with full force, wrapping around them like a shroud as Akari guided the wheelchair past the outer gate, bringing Haruto to the threshold where he would finally have to face the ghost of his family—and the reality of his brother.