Chapter 143| What Haruki Chose

The device’s amplification didn’t stabilize the way Edward had clearly expected.

Allen watched his brother’s expression shift from fierce, desperate resolve into something considerably more alarmed within seconds of the energy settling over him, power visibly, uncontrollably surging beyond whatever the butler had promised, arcs of raw, unstable force crackling outward from Edward’s frame and scattering across the arena floor in patterns none of his own considerable training had prepared him to properly contain.

"It’s not supposed to do this," Edward said, and for the first time since the match began, genuine fear cracked through his carefully constructed resolve.

"Edward, you need to shut it down!" Allen shouted, already moving, the Precognitive Reflex screaming warnings that no longer pointed toward a single, targeted threat but toward something considerably wider, more indiscriminate.

"I don’t know how!" Edward’s voice cracked with genuine panic now, his hands scrabbling uselessly at the device fused, apparently, more permanently to his gauntlet than the butler’s calm instruction had ever suggested it would be. Another arc of wild energy tore loose, this one considerably larger, carving a scorched line across the arena floor and continuing, unchecked, toward the stadium’s lower stands.

Toward the section where Haruki’s party sat.

Allen’s own considerable speed wasn’t enough to close that distance in time, and he felt the horror of that certainty settle cold and absolute in his chest even as he ran anyway, watching helplessly as the arc of unstable energy tore toward the crowded section, toward civilians who had no considerable ability to defend themselves against something that had already overwhelmed a trained S-rank Hunter’s own capacity to control it.

Haruki moved first.

Allen would replay the moment countless times in the weeks that followed, turning it over with the particular, aching clarity that only genuine grief ever properly sharpens — Haruki rising from his seat, already exhausted from the semifinal’s punishing toll, his own body flagged only days earlier as dangerously past safe thresholds, and throwing himself between the surging arc and the considerable crowd of strangers seated around him, his own flame-adjacent ability flaring into a desperate, improvised barrier that had never been designed to absorb anything close to what Edward’s malfunctioning device had unleashed.

The barrier held.

It held long enough for the energy to dissipate, scattering harmlessly against Haruki’s considerable, desperate effort rather than tearing through the stands as it would have otherwise, and the crowd around him, shaken but entirely unharmed, stared in stunned, grateful silence at the young man who’d just saved their lives with a body his own physician had already warned him was operating far past what it could safely sustain.

Then Haruki collapsed.

Allen reached him within seconds, having abandoned any pretense of continuing the match, Myria and the others close behind, and the sight that greeted him tore something raw and desperate open in his chest — Haruki on the ground, breathing in short, labored gasps, his considerable exhaustion from the semifinal compounded now by an effort that had clearly, catastrophically exceeded whatever remaining reserves his strained body still possessed.

"Haruki," Allen said, gathering him carefully, urgently, aware of medical staff already rushing toward them across the chaos-scattered field. "Stay with me. You’re going to be fine."

"Did it work?" Haruki asked, voice faint but carrying, even now, that same fierce, unguarded warmth Allen had come to genuinely treasure across their weeks of friendship. "Nobody got hurt?"

"Nobody got hurt," Allen confirmed, throat tight with mounting, desperate grief. "You saved them, Haruki. All of them."

"Good," Haruki said, something like genuine peace settling over his exhausted features despite the evident, considerable pain. "That’s good."

"Don’t talk like this is goodbye," Allen said, hearing his own voice crack. "The medics are coming. You’re going to be fine, you hear me? You’re going to—"

"Allen." Haruki’s hand found his, weak but deliberate. "It’s okay."

"It’s not okay," Allen said, tears he couldn’t suppress finally spilling free. "You have an entire life still waiting. Your team, your family, everything you’ve fought so incredibly hard to build—"

"I got to fight in the greatest tournament in the world," Haruki said, each word costing him visibly more than the last, though his expression never lost its fierce, gentle warmth. "I got to make it to the final four. I got a friend I never expected in a hundred lifetimes." His grip tightened faintly around Allen’s hand. "That’s not nothing, right? You told me that yourself."

"It’s considerable," Allen managed, the words breaking apart even as he said them. "It’s everything, Haruki. You’re everything."

Haruki’s answering smile carried the last of his considerable, unguarded warmth, and his eyes found Allen’s with quiet, genuine certainty even as his breathing grew shallower, more labored, the medical staff finally arriving too late to offer anything beyond confirming what Allen had already, desperately refused to accept.

"Tell Mika," Haruki whispered, "she’s got this. Team’s hers now. She’ll do incredible things."

"I’ll tell her," Allen promised, holding on with everything he had left.

"Thank you," Haruki said, so quiet Allen barely caught it, "for believing in the underdog."

And then, gently, without further struggle, he was gone.

The stadium had gone entirely silent by then, two point three billion viewers around the world watching in stunned, horrified stillness as Allen Veton knelt on the arena floor holding the body of a young man who had, in his final act, chosen to save a stadium full of strangers rather than his own considerable, fragile life, and Allen felt something in himself break open in a way that no previous loss, no previous impossible battle, had ever quite managed to reach.

Behind him, distantly, he was aware of Myria’s voice, sharp and urgent, directing something toward Edward, toward the still-malfunctioning device, toward whatever chaos remained to be properly contained. He was aware of Vivian’s hand settling against his shoulder, of Everlyn’s quiet, devastated tears, of Irene’s fierce, furious grief already beginning to harden into something considerably more dangerous.

None of it reached him properly, not yet, not while Haruki’s fierce, gentle warmth still lingered, cooling, in his arms.

"I’m sorry," Allen whispered, to a young man who could no longer hear him, to a friendship that had barely begun before the world took it away, to every unfair, considerable cost that genuine goodness so often demanded of the people who possessed it most fully. "I’m so sorry."

The stadium remained silent, holding its collective breath, as the Ascension Tournament’s final, in that single, devastating moment, ceased to matter at all.

Somewhere behind him, the device on Edward’s arm finally sputtered and died, its considerable, unstable power spent, and Edward himself sank to his knees amid the scorched wreckage of his own desperate mistake, staring at the scene unfolding across the field with an expression that carried, for the first time in longer than Allen could remember, something that looked entirely, genuinely like his brother again.