Chapter Text
Much like being submerged underwater, being caught in the whipping winds was a very good way of gaining some distance from the outside world, Aki had found.
When it was just her, the racing track, the runner controls, and the air flowing all around you, it was easy to forget there was anything else in the world. Like responsibilities. Chores. Worries. Fears.
She had always known riding a duel runner and turbo duelling were kind of things of their own, that they were special for a reason she had never quite been able to discern. Now, though, she could discern it, and found that she had severely underestimated just how special they were. For all that she had bristled at the brusque tone and demeanour of that female, French turbo duellist—Sherry—she could now see that she’d had a point. Turbo duelling truly was something you could only really understand if you did it yourself. No amount of watching other people turbo duel could ever get you close to fully comprehending what it was like.
Duelling itself, especially on a competitive level, was already a world of its own, and no spectator would ever be able to grasp at the exhilaration, at the inner fire that gripped any passionate duellist when the battle started. Turbo duelling, however, was on a whole other level. It wasn’t just her and the cards anymore; it was her, the cards, the wind, the track, the runner controls, and the constant, flowing movement of the machine under her. It was thrilling, downright electric, but it was also tense and nerve-wracking, and often all of those things at the same time.
Aki couldn’t even begin to imagine what it would be like to be doing this in front of a crowd, with the added edge of a competitive setting. The day where she would have to face precisely that situation drew ever closer, though.
With Crow having recently been injured in his strange accident, it was now up to her to take the third spot on Team 5Ds for their match against Team Unicorn. Which, fair enough, she had volunteered for—and proudly, at that. She had miscalculated just how anxious she would get about the whole thing, however.
Her, a near-amateur at turbo duelling, entering a worldwide competition alongside Jack and Yusei, who both not only had previous tournament victories under their belts, but were also much more practiced, hardened duellists altogether. If she thought about it too long—and she had a tendency of thinking about things for too long, these days—it sounded almost absurd.
I don’t want to make a laughingstock of our team. What if I completely embarrass us? I should have thought of that before I told them to let me take Crow’s place.
At the same time, looking back, she knew she couldn’t have done it differently; she didn’t want to leave Jack and Yusei to go into their very first preliminary match with the disadvantage of having only two wheelers, and thus, only 8000 life points on their team. Both she and Crow wanted them to at least be on even ground with Team Unicorn in terms of life points. The boys did wish to win this tournament, after all.
I hope I don’t become the reason we lose this match. Or, worse yet, the reason someone gets injured.
The worst, and, in hindsight, most reckless part of having signed up for temporarily taking Crow’s spot was that she was doing it while she was still wrangling her psychic powers with what felt like little success. Sure, a decent amount of time had passed since Divine had given his last hurrah, sure, she had been working on herself in between and had duelled people, and sure, she hadn’t injured anyone during that time. Yet. Even so, it still felt like she might, it still felt like there was just something… off, something that didn’t fit. It was almost like having been forced to come face-to-face with Divine again had irreversibly damaged her powers somehow, so that no matter how hard she tried controlling herself, it always felt like she was just one lapse in concentration away from slipping and hurting someone. By now, the uncomfortable feeling even followed her into her dreams, where she would sometimes find herself in places she had previously visited as the Black Rose Witch, except that this time, she wasn’t the witch, but her opponent. She fought herself in her dreams, and more often than not, those dreams ended just as the witch was about to win. It terrified Aki, and she didn’t know what to do to make it stop.
No amount of training, no amount of duelling, no amount of proof that she wasn’t hurting people seemed to be great enough to actually make her believe she had a grip on herself now. Whatever confidence she might have been on the way to gaining before Divine had driven himself back into her life like a jagged knife—leaving an appropriately ugly scar in the process—was practically nonexistent now. To say the frustration about this was mounting would have been an incredible understatement. Sometimes, the sheer anxiety and rage-inducing sensation of helplessness was enough to make Aki feel like she wanted to break something. That in itself was scary, too, because she knew what her rage looked like, and she wanted no part of it anymore.
Like a poorly tended grave being overgrown by weeds, she wanted to bury and banish the Black Rose Witch, never to find traces of her again. Unfortunately, that part, that shadow of her past, didn’t seem so eager to leave, though.
For pity’s sake, now I’m doing it again.
With growing frustration, Aki shook her head a little, realising that she wasn’t focussing on the wind, her runner’s movement or the speed anymore, like she had initially set out to do. This was meant to be a training session, an opportunity for her to deepen her familiarity with her runner as not to have to worry that she might mess up because she wasn’t comfortable enough driving it yet at the match.
Instead, it seemed that she had turning the training session into another round of ruminating—something that she was already doing way too often recently. Something she had already been doing way too often for months now.
It was beyond infuriating to think that just one more meeting with Divine had managed to throw her badly enough off-balance for her to spend months digesting that accursed encounter.
If I’d known duelling him would mess me up this badly, I’d have just summoned Black Rose Dragon without a duel and had her strangle him right off the bat. I should have done that instead.
A part of her remembered all too well that this solution, however vindictively satisfying it might have been, wouldn’t have been possible, back then. Not with how Divine had set things up to make Yusei regret anything she could have done. The part of her mind that was aware of this was very quiet right now, though, because she ached for a neat, clean solution to her dilemma which seemed to be nowhere in sight.
Perhaps if I could be rid of these powers altogether, it’d be easier.
It wasn’t the first time she had thought of it. In fact, she had thought something along those very same lines more often than she could count during the last few years. Even during her time at the Arcadia Movement, when Divine had done everything to make her view her powers as extraordinary and as a reason for why she was special and better than others, he hadn’t ever been able to chase this thought away; so often, she had ached to simply be rid of her “special gift” entirely, to just be a normal person who didn’t have to worry about these things. Obviously, it had been for naught. The universe had never complied with her silent plea to one day let her wake up and be free of her powers, which had left her to try and make the best of the cards life had dealt her, instead. Worst of all, she had been so sure that she was finally approaching a point where she no longer had to struggle with being a psychic duellist quite as much, a few months ago. She had been so sure she was finally reaching a point of stability—until Divine had showed up again, back from the dead for a second time.
Now, every day seemed to be a renewed struggle to gauge correctly how her powers would respond to any given situation. For every instance where she used them successfully—like when she had freed Yusei from within that truck or when she duelled the other students at the academy—there seemed to be another where it felt like she was about to lose control entirely. She was caught in a state of constantly flip-flopping between feeling like she had a decent enough grip on herself and feeling like it was only through sheer luck that she wasn’t currently maiming people. The sense of being properly in control which she so craved often came tentatively within reach, only to then slip through her fingers like dry sand again. Worse yet, no matter what she tried doing differently, the results never changed. Something simply didn’t work like it had before she had learned that Divine had survived his encounter with Ccarayhua; something was wrong, and she still couldn’t figure out what.
It’s been months. Months! And I’ve tried everything in the book. I’ve summoned my monsters against lifeless objects to try and direct them more precisely, I’ve duelled real people, I’ve tried keeping as calm as possible and leaving all my emotions out of it when I duel, hell, I’ve even tried meditating to empty myself of emotions! What am I still doing wrong? Why do I never feel in control, no matter what I do? What kind of curse has Divine left me with?
Despite not truly knowing whether that theory held any merit, Aki’s thoughts, when trying to find a culprit for her predicament, always circled back to Divine. The very idea of it crawled under her skin like ants—that this was somehow his fault, that he had put this burden of never feeling at ease with her powers on her. That he had left a mark, a stain on her somehow.
He already left a stain on me long before that. He had years to cover me in all sorts of traces of his vile influence, from head to toe.
There was an undeniable sensation of being unclean, being corrupted somehow, that came with these thoughts. A persistent worry that Divine had left a kind of damage she could never fix. It only infuriated her further.
Trying to focus on the track, the wind, the movement again, Aki pushed the engine to go faster, trying to ignore the way her eyes stung all the while. If she hadn’t been wearing a helmet with an intact visor, perhaps she could have pretended that the sensation came from the wind.
As though life wanted to spite her some more, an ache was beginning to form behind her eyes now, too. It could have been from the way she was constantly clenching her jaw, but Aki didn’t believe that. Migraines unfortunately seemed to be something she had become prone to, in the last months. More upsetting yet, they seemed to have a tendency to crop up at the worst possible times, like when she was training or duelling and needed all the concentration she could get. She had even seen a doctor about it at this point, but all he had been able to theorise was that the sudden, frequent headaches might be stress-related, perhaps due to her re-admittance to duel academy, and that she should try taking it easy.
Aki could have almost laughed right in his face, that day. “Taking it easy” seemed to be categorically impossible, with her powers and whatever unpredictable thing they might get up to next constantly putting her on edge.
Perhaps the worst part of it all was that she no longer felt like she could really talk to anyone about her seemingly endless worry anymore.
Sure, Yusei, in his seemingly limitless patience, always listened and always offered his shoulder for comfort, but they both knew that he could offer no clean solutions, and, at this point, only little feedback that he hadn’t tried to offer before already. He still invited her to duel him whenever either of them felt like it, still offered himself as a means for her to practice, always, without hesitation. Which was… good, to some extent. It felt like it helped, sometimes, like it allowed her to let go a bit. If nothing else, she had managed not to hurt him even a single time. Despite that, though, it still wasn’t enough to permanently chase the feeling of uncertainty, of wrongness, away.
Then there was Carly. Sweet, cheerful Carly who wanted nothing more than to support her, even if she didn’t always know how. Who always tried lifting her up, telling her that things would get better or tried to kindly remind her that her own mind was always certain to be the meanest when it came to judging herself. Who offered to duel her in their spare time just as much as Yusei did, even knowing that it might result in her getting hurt (and kept getting shot down by Aki for that very reason all the time). And who was also ready to listen to the same insecurities for the umpteenth time, to the point where Aki felt guilty for dumping those same worries on her friend time and time again. It was that guilt that had ultimately stopped her from bringing up the topic entirely unless Carly did.
Even Crow, despite always being a little more peripheral than Yusei and Carly, had caught onto the fact that she was a bit out of step and offered any and all support that he could, distracted her with every joke he could think of, asked her how she was doing all the time—hell, even he was offering himself up for practice duels, all by himself, because Aki knew Yusei hadn't put him up to it. Naturally, he also offered to just listen, nod along and let her talk whenever she needed it.
At this point, no amount of verbally dissecting the subject seemed to help anymore, though.
On the contrary, talking about it over and over again, especially knowing that it would not yield any different, let alone better, results, made Aki feel like a broken record. Not to speak of the fact that a part of her feared that, despite her friends' thus far unshakeable patience, they would eventually tire of hearing about the same concerns she had already gone over what felt like a million times, or perhaps start judging her for still not being "over it". Or, worse yet, that they might start accusing her of faking those very concerns, since all she was doing was babbling about how much she was worrying what her powers might do, despite the fact that the last time she had hurt someone had been Yusei during the very horror spectacle with Divine that had started this self-esteem crisis. Since then, she had gone incident-free, which should have counted for something. She wanted it to count for something. Somehow, true awareness of that fact just never sunk in, though. No matter how many times she repeated it to herself—you haven't hurt anyone in almost a year, you haven't hurt anyone in almost a year—the doubt simply refused to go away. Fear had burrowed somewhere deep in her heart like the roots of a yew tree, as long and winding as their plant's berries were poisonous.
Of course, she told herself she should know better, too. That she shouldn't believe her friends would ever turn on her like that, because they had proven they weren't so quick to give up on people, that their kindness towards her was neither conditional nor faked, because they liked her for her and not for whatever asset she could be to them. They didn't need her to be a shining jewel and didn't base the amount of companionship and acceptance they offered her around that. If the past few months had taught her anything, though, then that her ability to have faith in people—and, indeed, in herself—wasn't that well-developed yet. The doubt kept creeping back in.
By now, it seemed to creep into everything, constantly lurking at the edges of her mind like a growing ivy plant, ready to gradually strangle the tree whose bark it had decided to climb.
When a relatively sharp turn in the track came, Aki realised just in time that she had pushed the engine a little too hard to take said turn safely; she managed to slow down mere heartbeats before centrifugal forces might have given her an unkind reminder that they were influencing her runner just as much as she was. In the aftermath, she wobbled for just a second, and so, decided to slow down further, to stop entirely to collect herself.
As she looked back at the stretch of track behind her, her brows furrowed.
If I'd been more focussed, I could have taken that turn at a higher speed and still not wobbled even the slightest bit. Where's my concentration when I need it? I can't risk getting injured now, too!
Frustrated, she took off her helmet, and noticed that her hands were shaking as she did so. Breathing erratically, half from anger and half from that undefinable, yet decidedly unpleasant, tight sensation in her chest, she stared down at the helmet, her teeth gritted. From the visor, her reflection stared back at her, and she could see that her face was twisted into a frown, her eyes already glazed over with tears of frustration, not quite ready to spill just yet. Aki studied her own face and the twisting sensation in her chest only worsened.
Her eyes, so doe-like and pathetic when they were threatening tears like this, her hair, slightly mussed from the wind, but still in its usual cut. Divine had suggested her this look, too. Of course, he had left her some freedom of choice in it, or had at least pretended to, but the bangs, the length—it had been his idea. He had been awfully pedantic about how often she was supposed to get it cut, too. And that stupid hairpiece. The power inhibitor she still couldn’t rid herself of, however much she hated the very sight of it at this point, the familiar weight still tight against her head, as usual.
Right in that moment, she wanted to tear it out of her hair, to throw it away, see if she could toss it hard enough to break it completely as she did so. She wanted to cut her bangs, her hair, hack it all off just to see whether it would calm the ugly feelings inside her, whether it would bring her freedom. Years of always requesting the same cut, of habitually rolling up her hair around the hairpiece, of straightening her bangs after, satisfied when everything sat just the way Divine had suggested it should. She wanted to tear it all out, burn it away, maybe shear it off. The obvious, visual reminder of how much Divine had influenced her made her sick.
Despite her hands trembling where they held onto the helmet, however, she didn’t move them to pluck so much as a single hair out. Instead, she tried calming her breathing, fighting the urge to cry, to scream, to smash something to pieces. The breaths she took came forced and strained, and she blinked, and blinked again, trying to chase the tears she refused to let spill away.
At this rate, I’m going to reach my breaking point soon. I can’t afford this right now. And I don’t even want to know what’d happen if I did reach it.
Aki bit the inside of her cheek, hard, trying to pull herself back to reality.
Stop spiralling. Stop thinking about it again and again, it won’t improve anything!
Though her breathing had yet to fully return to normal, she put the helmet back on, briefly retracting the visor to wipe her eyes with her gloved hand.
Back on track. Stop this. We’ve got no time to cry, we need to practice. The match is in less than three days.
Sliding the visor back down, she put her hands on the runner controls once more and re-accelerated. She couldn’t let the others down. No matter what her mental landscape looked like at the moment, she had to be able to function. She had to do this. For her friends, for Yusei, for herself.
Perhaps if only to prove that she hadn't lost her marbles yet.
~*~
When she had driven by the Poppo Time garage later, everything had seemed to be as it had ever been. Yusei had been working on someone's runner as usual, while Bruno, who had seemingly been working on a program, occasionally provided feedback, and before she had even come through the door, Aki had already been able to hear Jack and Crow bicker. The conversation topics once she had entered the garage hadn't been anything out of the ordinary, either. Yusei and Bruno had asked her how the runner was treating her and whether there were any adjustments she wanted them to make (which she had politely declined, as the runner was in perfect condition), and Jack and Crow had mostly asked about how her practice was going (which she had pretended was going fine because like hell was she going to admit to the record level her anxiety sat at).
However, despite the comfort the normalcy could have offered, Aki had been unable to feel at ease and had soon extricated herself from the situation by way of pretending she still had homework she needed to do. She had seen the look Yusei had given her for it—he probably hadn't bought it for even a single second, and he was right not to. The whole thing was a conversation she couldn't have, though, or rather, didn't want to have yet again in that moment, so she had left him and the other three to it, driving away from the Poppo Time shop not too long after she had initially gotten there.
Darkness was slowly beginning to descend over the city now, and she knew her parents would doubtlessly call to ask where she was and whether she would be staying with the boys tonight soon. Initially, she had set out to drive straight home, turning over the idea of taking a nap in the hopes that it would help calm her. Aki had decided against it, however. It had already been rather late for a nap back when she had left, and now the day was rapidly approaching good-night's-sleep territory, rather than nap-territory. That aside, she'd had a feeling she wouldn't really be able to fall asleep, anyway.
So instead, she had opted for driving along the streets of New Domino City yet again, telling herself that she could, perhaps, squeeze in some more practice driving, that the break with the boys in between might have returned some focus to her. It hadn't. Her driving, though at least secure enough not to make her wobble after sharp turns like earlier that day, had gotten consistently more aimless, and before she had been able to really think about it, she had already found herself driving across the Daedalus Bridge as the sun was setting dramatically in the distance. Perhaps a desire for higher velocity had brought her here—the speed limit on the bridge was quite permissive. That aside, the harder the wind whipped around her form, the more attention she had to pay to driving safely, and the more difficult it was to torture herself with complicated thoughts. Granted, it probably wasn't the best solution to calm her raging mind, but it wasn't like she had been able to come up with any better ideas.
By now, she was well past the bridge and splat within what had once been Satellite, though—an area she didn't know too well and that she really didn't have much of a reason to be in.
Many of the streets here were utterly unfamiliar and by now, she was beginning to ask herself why she even kept driving. The island was still largely covered in construction sites, most of which weren't much to look at, and the parts that weren't could seemingly only be either of two things: barely refurbished houses that looked like they were held together by spit and tape, or brand-new houses that only made the older ones look even worse by comparison. Between these buildings, one could still spot the occasional scrapheap that hadn't been fully cleared out yet, which probably wasn't all that surprising, considering that literally the entire island had once been practically covered in them.
It may have been almost a year, but in comparison to the seventeen years before that where New Domino could freely dump all its garbage here... To think that Yusei, Jack and Crow all grew up right between the scrap and refuse from the city.
At some point during her aimless drive, she came down a freshly paved street between two relatively high buildings. It seemed to lead to a bridge, and at first, Aki almost wondered whether the public maintenance bureau had had another bridge built that she didn't know of yet. As she took in the sight of the rickety old thing and noticed that it didn't actually lead anywhere, though, she realised which bridge this was.
Looking up, right above her head, Aki saw the Y-split of the massive, still relatively new Daedalus Bridge. And before herself... the original Daedalus Bridge.
It would be nice if I remembered how I got here, then I'd at least know how to find my way back in the future.
She wasn't sure for what purpose she might come back here for, but knowing the history of this place, and knowing the meaning it held for her teammates, Aki couldn't help but feel that discovering it on her own was somehow monumental.
Eager to indulge in the distraction and lured in by the stories attached to this spot, Aki drove closer, stopping just short of where the actual "bridge" began. There, she finally stopped her runner, turning off the engine and the lights and deciding to get off for the first time in a while, her knees and shoulders protesting from the strain of continuous driving in the same position as she did so.
The atmosphere was just the slightest bit eerie, given how empty the streets around her seemed, but at least she wasn't in complete darkness. Two new streetlamps had since been put up to the right and left of the old Daedalus Bridge, as well as a small plaque indicating that this was the original. It gave the whole place a statelier feeling, although the deeply Satellite character of it could not be denied—it was, at the end of the day, still a rickety, terribly unsafe, unfinished bridge a determined man had once begun building from scraps. Perhaps it was for the better that the bridge’s character had been preserved in that way, though. It was a non-sanitised reminder of what had once been.
As she stood up, stretching her legs, Aki took a deep breath. The air over here, so close to the sea, was much saltier than in the city centre. It had an almost metallic tang to it, like the scrap that had once littered these streets was still lying somewhere just out of sight. Though slightly unfamiliar, the smell of it was comforting. Perhaps because it reminded her of Yusei.
Speaking of which...
With another glance at the bridge, Aki retrieved her phone from her bag in the back compartment of the runner. Sure enough, when she turned it on, three notifications greeted her: Two for messages, from Carly and Yusei each, and one for a missed call from her parents.
Deciding that she would deal with her parents later and knowing from experience that Carly could be remarkably patient when it came to messages, Aki opened the chat with Yusei first.
>>Hey, you okay?
>>I don't wanna bug you or anything, and you can tell me to shove off if you don't feel like it, but if there's anything you need to talk about... You just seemed a little tense earlier.
He had sent these messages close to an hour ago now and a part of Aki immediately felt guilty for not opening and answering them sooner. On the other hand, he wasn’t wrong, though. She did kind of not want to talk about it. But then, this was Yusei. She knew he wasn't asking these things to pry, and she knew he meant it when he offered her to shut him down and drop it. He would let her do that—he was perhaps the only person in her life who was willing to let her do that so far. Even her parents, for all that she could recognise that they loved her, often couldn't manage not to stick their nose in Aki's business somehow.
>I... wouldn't really know what to talk about, to be honest.
>I'm just nervous because of the upcoming match.
It wasn't the entire truth. Maybe Yusei would even guess that it wasn't. He was good at reading between the lines like that. More specifically, between her lines.
Despite the fact that it had been almost an hour since he had originally texted her, Yusei's reply was swift and included no reprimand about how long it had taken her to respond.
>>I figured. Look, I know this is a big deal, but don't put the world on your shoulders, alright? The fact that you're doing this for the team is already incredible. Don't push yourself past your limits because you think you might need to live up to some weird standard that doesn't even exist now.
>>I'm already grateful that you offered to cover for crow, and it'll work out one way or another.
Aki caught her bottom lip between her teeth. Of course he would write something like that, of course he would calm her, even when it came to this. They both knew how much their team's participation in the WRGP meant to Yusei, they both knew this was something he wanted to do, and perhaps even wanted to win, alongside his foster brothers. It wasn't as simple as "it'll work out one way or another". Being who he was, he shoved all of that aside, though, dropped it like it meant nothing, just to tell her it would be all right. Just to accommodate her anxiety.
>It's kind of a really big deal, though. And I want to do well. I don't want to let you guys down. Especially not Crow. I know how frustrated he is that he can't participate in the very first match.
>>Aki, you're a fantastic duelist. I don't think there's any way you could let us down. And you'll do well, I'm sure of it.
At least one of us has some confidence in me, I guess.
Aki’s thumbs hesitated before typing the next message.
>Thanks, I should… try believing that myself, some time.
It was honest, and thus, uncomfortable. Her self-confidence had never really been the best, but in recent months, it had been nothing short of a complete struggle. Though she knew well that she would sooner incinerate herself than go back to that part of her life, it could not be denied that she had felt less exposed and forced to reckon with her own personality, flaws and all, back when she had been a part of the Arcadia Movement. Being completely cut off from the outside world and sheltered within a weird, private society where all coherent thinking was done for a person spared them from a lot of introspection and assessment of their own personality—who knew.
>>You give yourself so little credit. You should have some faith in yourself. Just a little.
As Aki looked down at the message, she frowned. She understood why Yusei had a point, but having faith in herself, she had learned, was hardly as easy as snapping her fingers and suddenly being confident, no matter how much she wished it could have been that simple.
>I’m trying.
>>I know you are. All I want you to know is that you don’t have to be so harsh on yourself.
Aki sighed, but before she could type a reply, another message came.
>>That’s my girlfriend you’re bullying, you know.
Despite everything, a small snort escaped her. Yusei was good at that, too—at drawing a tiny laugh or the hint of a smile out of her even in the worst situations.
>I’ll try to be nice to her. No promises, though.
>>Well, that’s better than nothing I guess.
>>Are you home safe by the way?
Though the question seemed innocuous and wasn’t out of character for Yusei to ask, Aki had a feeling the concern about her whereabouts didn’t actually come from him.
>Did my parents call you to ask where I am?
>>Yeah.
At least he had the decency to simply admit it instead of covering for them. But then, of course he did.
>Ugh. They need to learn to be less uptight about where I go. No, I’m not home. I wanted to try and get a clear head, so I went driving for a little longer. I’m not in danger or anything.
>>Alright
>And you don’t have to tell them that, by the way. They don’t have to use you as an in-between all the time. You’re not my babysitter.
>>I’m not trying to be.
>I know! It’d be lovely if they could see that, too.
>Anyway, I’ll give them a call to let them know I haven’t died and been tossed into a ditch, I guess.
>>Okay. Have a safe drive back. Offer to talk is still standing if you need to get anything off your chest. You know I’ll be up for a while.
>Thank you. And I do know, but you should try to get a healthy amount of sleep.
>>If you promise me you’ll try being nice to yourself.
>Fine. It’s a deal.
With that, Aki switched from the message app to the phone app with a small sigh. Her finger already hovered over her father’s number when suddenly, a call came in. It wasn’t either of her parents, however.
It was Misty Tredwell, of all people, who had given Aki her number some time after the end of the whole dark signer business, when they had met because Misty had wanted to apologise for her actions.
Why would she be calling me now?
Too mystified to decline the call in order to calm her parents’ fears instead, Aki picked up.
“H-Hello?” The stutter in her voice was unintentional, but at first, she wasn’t even sure this wasn’t a prank of some sort.
The second the person on the other end of the line spoke, however, she knew this was real. “Oh, you picked up! I’m glad. Hello, Aki.”
Curiosity about the reason why Misty might be calling her wiped Aki’s mind pleasantly blank, her parents and her anxiety slipping to the furthest corners of her thoughts as she said, “Hello, Misty. I somehow wasn’t sure if it was really you at first.”
“Ah, yes, this call is rather out of the blue, isn’t it? I’m sorry, I hope I’m not interrupting anything important. Or keeping you from going to sleep or some such.”
“You’re not doing either of those. In fact, I’m in a decent spot to talk right now. How are you?”
“I’m well, thank you. A bit jet-lagged because of my most recent flight, currently, but otherwise fine. How about yourself?”
“I’m…” Aki hesitated and hoped Misty wouldn’t notice. “I’m all right. A little nervous, at the moment, but I can handle it.” At least she hoped she could. The jury was still out on that one.
“Nervous? How so?”
Gritting her teeth, Aki almost wished she had simply lied and said she was fine. Saying that didn’t help, either, though. It never had.
“It’s, um… It’s a little complicated. I could get into it, but—first, if I may ask, I was wondering why you called? Just to check in with me? I mean, it’s obviously fine if that’s the reason, I just…”
“You’re just wondering if there’s more to it, I imagine.” Misty’s voice had that usual, slightly enigmatic quality to it as she gave a small chuckle. “I understand, don’t worry. To tell you the truth, I am partially just calling to see how you’re doing, since the post cards I sent you, as much as I enjoy writing them, just aren’t a very efficient way of communicating. But there’s another reason, too.”
When there was a small pause, Aki asked, “Okay. What’s up?”
“Well, you see, I happen to be back in New Domino City for once, and I was wondering if you’d like to meet in person while I’m here.”
The immediate question on Aki’s mind was “but why”, but she bit it back, under the impression that it would be too blunt. It wasn’t that she disliked the idea of meeting Misty, it was just… weird. Why would Misty want to meet her? They had already cleared the air between them, there were no more hard feelings from either side. There was the possibility that Misty just wanted to meet for a friendly chat and to catch up, of course, but although Aki wasn’t opposed to that, she hadn’t exactly thought of herself and the older woman as friends, before. Amiable acquaintances brought together by bizarre circumstances, maybe—but not friends.
Was this an indication that Misty wanted to be friends, then? Some part of Aki hated that she couldn’t be sure, because it sometimes still felt as though she wasn’t used to the concept of having friends.
Realising the silence might stretch to awkward levels if she didn’t reply, Aki, not wanting to seem like she hated the idea, dropped the thought and said, “Sure! Until when are you in the city?”
“Until next Wednesday. Then I’ll be off to the next photoshoot.”
Wednesday. Misty would be staying in New Domino long enough to potentially catch Team 5Ds’ match against Team Unicorn on Tuesday, then. That brought back an unfortunate feeling of anxiety.
“Does Saturday or Sunday work better for you? I know you’re usually busy with duel academy during the week.”
Saturday was tomorrow, and Aki had already reserved that one for lunch with Yusei.
Swallowing briefly, she said, “How about Sunday?”
“Certainly. Would you like to come around for tea in the afternoon? Because I fear I’ll be on the phone with my manager for quite a while before lunch.”
“Oh, of course, I understand. Where do you want me to come?”
“Well, I was thinking we could just meet at my place. The café last time was very nice, but I do prefer getting some privacy beyond a simple booth in a café when I can.”
Calling the café she and Misty had last met in “very nice” felt like an incredible understatement, seeing as it had probably been the most expensive public establishment Aki had ever ordered food or drink in—save, perhaps, for the few, official dinners her father had been invited to which they had attended as a family. For what it was worth, she could understand Misty's desire for privacy, though. Especially given how publicly recognisable she was as a model.
"Okay, I can come to yours, then. You'll just have to tell me where that is," Aki offered.
"Of course. I'll send you the address via text. Does four in the afternoon sound good to you?" Misty's voice was as placid and calm as ever, in that rather rehearsed-seeming way of hers.
Aki did some quick thinking, then nodded, only to realise that Misty couldn't see her, of course. "Yes, that would work just fine for me."
"I'm glad." Aki could downright see the soft upturn of Misty's lips in her mind's eye, that perfect, restrained smile she usually wore in advertisements, too. "I look forward to seeing you. If I may before I hang up, though, you were saying something about being nervous earlier? What's bothering you?"
Frowning slightly, Aki had to resist the urge to twirl one of the long strands of her bangs around her fingers from nerves. "Oh, it's—you know, if we're going to be seeing each other the day after tomorrow, maybe it'd be better if I told you, then. Otherwise, this call might take a good while before either of us can hang up. It's just... As I said, it's complicated." On one hand, she said it because she genuinely thought this would be a conversation better had in person, but on the other, she was just avoiding the topic because it made her uncomfortable. There was a very real chance that meeting and catching up with Misty would result in her telling the whole sordid tale of her last encounter with Divine again, and if it came to that, Aki really would have preferred being in a comfortable environment, preferably seated, not on the phone, and also not in Satellite after dark.
"I understand. You can tell me all about it on Sunday, then." Though Misty's tone was kind, there was an indication that she was definitely curious about Aki's dilemma.
I think the question is whether I really want to do that...
"Right. Yes. Then... See you on Sunday?"
"Yes. I'll send you the address right after our call. See you then, Aki. Have a nice evening."
"You, too."
With that, the call ended, and Misty's voice was gone.
Aki stood by her runner, now hearing nothing except the ocean waves rolling against the shore nearby, wondering what exactly had just happened. Although she was a nice person, now that she was free of Ccarayhua's influence, Misty had never struck her as the type who socialised much or wanted to be her friend before. And though Aki tried not to, in the spirit of learning to trust people like she wanted to, she couldn't help but wonder whether there was an ulterior motive behind Misty's invitation.
But what could she possibly want from me? There's nothing I could give her, and nothing I could want from her, either.
These thoughts bounced around Aki's head for a few moments more before her phone suddenly gave a gentle buzz, announcing that a message had arrived. Sure enough, it was Misty's address—a luxurious apartment hotel downtown which Aki could remember having passed by before.
She's serious about the invitation then.
Before she could ponder on it further, her phone went off a second time—another message in a different chat. It was Yusei again.
>>Okay sorry but did you call your parents yet because they just called me again
Immediately, all intrigue about Misty's invitation was wiped clear from Aki's mind and she audibly groaned.
>For pity's sake. I'm on it, sorry, I got distracted for a moment.
>>It's fine, don't worry. Just telling you so you don't have to get an earful later at home.
Briefly, Aki's lips turned up at Yusei's message, or rather, at the way he always put her first. Words could not describe how nice it was, to be someone else's first priority, to be treasured like that. She knew she had no time to dwell on it, however—and knew that Yusei would brush it off like it was a thing that everyone did if she tried complimenting him on it, besides.
As such, Aki finally went back to the phone app, this time tapping her father's contact to make the usual call to calm her parents' panic.
Knowing them, I probably shouldn't mention that I drove to Satellite, of all places, after sunset.