Teacher's Pet

Disclaimer: I do not own Liar Game or Akiyama or Nao. I just make the pretties dance.

Author's Notes: Written for AU Bingo, for the prompt "someone never dies." It should be obvious who this 'someone' is I think. So, anyway, no death means no becoming a con-artist means no prison. So Akiyama ends up teaching at a private all-girls university when Liar Game begins instead of just getting out of prison. Or something like that.

It's only when Akiyama Shinichi's favorite student misses his Introduction to Psychology class two times in a row that he realizes that he does, in fact, have a favorite student.

Perhaps it's Kanzaki's quiet earnestness or the way she smiles with her whole face when she understands a new concept but Akiyama admits only to himself that he has something of a soft spot for her, even though she's been his student for all of a month.

So when her disposition changes to a perpetually worried grimace and she spends her time in class looking distracted, Akiyama notices. And a couple weeks later, when she misses those two sessions for no apparent reason, he worries more than a mere assistant professor probably should no matter that he tells himself it's probably nothing.

The Kanzaki who comes in the next week wears the blotches of a tear-stained face and messy hair. Her hands shake when she takes notes. Is it her father? When Nao confided to him about her family situation, Akiyama understood more than he has let on. Maybe that's it, he thinks, when he tries to find the explanation for why, in three years of teaching here, Kanzaki is the first student he's actually felt a level of personal interest in. He's been raised by a lone parent, and had to then watch that parent grow ill and need care.

Regardless of their situations, something is wrong, and after how life has gone for him, Akiyama prefers not to take the apathetic route.

"Kanzaki," he calls out when the class session is finished, "would you mind staying for a bit."

Kanzaki winces, but she does turn around. "I'm sorry for my absences, Akiyama-sensei." Her voice trembles when she says that and her posture stiffens. "I'll—I'll try not to miss any more. I really enjoy your class."

Akiyama adjusts his reading glasses. Kanzaki's answer doesn't reassure him at all. "While I'm glad to hear that, your absences are not what I wanted to talk to you about. Is there something wrong?"

She stares at him. The look of "how do you know?" flickers across her face, and Akiyama doesn't—can't—answer the question at all, but he does know because he recognizes that look of perpetual worry tumbling around inside a person's heart. He can see her debating with herself and the moment she makes up her mind. Kanzaki takes a deep breath. "Do you have time, Akiyama-sensei? I don't want to…"

For her, right now, he has all the time in the world. "I have the time. Let's go somewhere."

They fit into his tiny office, and once there, Akiyama invites Kanzaki to sit down. She still trembles, but there's resolve too in the way that she sits up straight. "So, what's worrying you?"

Nao pulls a glossy black card from her bag, several of them, and they spell out her situation in neat printed letters: 100 million yen in debt, ten times the amount that drove his mother to the roof of the hospital, ready to jump. He was lucky that day. Someone—a nurse—talked her down and forced her to confide. Now, Akiyama supposes, this is his time to pay for that good deed with one of his own.

"Fujisawa-sensei is—was—my favorite teacher," Nao explains, "so I guess when I found out that he was going to my opponent in this Liar Game—" Akiyama considers this to be a game only in the most horrific sense of the word—"I trusted him. I thought that we'd just get through the whole thing safely and make sure that this corporation didn't get any of the money, and I did something that was just so stupid and now I don't know what to do."

"Remember," Akiyama keeps his voice calm. "No matter what the lapse in judgment is, he scammed you. He made the first move. People will do just about anything for money."

"I just don't want to be in debt. My father, and…and I don't know. I don't care about getting any of Fujisawa-sensei's money, I just want…"

To live. Akiyama completes the sentence in his mind after she trails off.

The ghost of an idea forms, one that has haunted him before when faced with a wall of debts that will take years—possibly decades—to repay, but when he puts voice to the possibility his mother always rebukes him and reminds him that honesty is the only way to a happy life. Akiyama wants to believe that, but as he sees what happens to honest people who encounter predators, another conclusion comes to him.

Someone needs to protect the honest.

"How long before the game ends?" Akiyama asks.

"On the fourteenth. But the money is in a safe-deposit box. There's no way to get to it before time runs out. It's impossible."

The fourteenth, the fourteenth. The date sticks out in Akiyama's head. It's a touch more than three weeks from now, and when he brings up the calendar, Akiyama sees the opening immediately.

"A safe deposit box, you say?"

"Yeah."

"It's not impossible at all. The fourteenth is a Sunday, which means that the banks are closed."

Kanzaki opens her eyes, and makes that whole-face smile she gets when she realizes something. "Which means that he has to take it out before then!"

"Exactly." A plan falls into place so quickly that it scares Akiyama almost. He's honest. He's not supposed to have a knack for scamming people, but after studying psychology for so long and researching the people who scammed his mother, he knows a thing or two. Once the right circumstances are made, stealing the money back will be a snap. "I have a perfect plan, but we're going to have to be ruthless. Are you prepared?"

Nao nods with resolve. "I am."

"How good are you with acting?"

"I could manage, I guess."

"Well, then…" Akiyama leans in and draws out his plan for her, and when Nao's eyes go wide and she actually calls out cognitive dissonance at one point when he explains the steps of his plan, he grins.

There is definitely a reason why she is his favorite student.