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There’s a woman on the bench where Yuya likes to sit. He considers briefly just moving to another spot, but it’s the only bench in the vicinity not currently occupied by an elderly person, and pleasantly shaded. It’s a warm day, and he’s feeling lazy.
The woman is young - an adult, to be sure, but a little younger than Yuya still. She’s reading a book on duel theory, an uneaten egg sandwich sitting on the bench next to her.
Yuya sits, stretching his neck and legs while keeping as much distance between them as possible. Every day that passes is a reminder of all the times he skipped doing stretches before pulling a wild stunt. Once upon a time, he could have done backflips while dueling, but he notices nowadays how often his feet ache just from standing in one place for too long, how his neck sometimes hurts from sleeping on it wrong.
A little away, a couple of schoolkids duel on the grass while their friend shows them how to jump on a skateboard.
His knees hurt just thinking about doing a trick like that. It actually pops audibly when he moves to straighten up.
The woman turns to look at him. He smiles sheepishly, and the smile freezes on his face.
Her hair is darker and shorter, framing a rounder face than the one he recalls. Brown eyes peer at him with concern through reading glasses. Looking at her feels like one of those old memory tests, where he has to look at a picture and try to memorize as many details as possible before closing his eyes and reciting everything he remembers.
But he knows her, undeniably. Asuka Tenjouin.
Not the Asuka he knows, though. She looks at him quizzically, giving him a polite nod, and turns back to her book, no sign of recognition on her face.
He shouldn’t blame her; there’s no fusion dimension anymore, after all, so she’s not the same person as the one he met. Still, he can’t help the twinge of sadness.
On regular days, he prefers anonymity. He’s recognizable, he knows that. Not too many people with his hair color, and even fewer who were also dueltainers as kids. Grand total of one whose father basically invented the artform, but who was counting?
His father was around the same age he is now when he went missing that time.
Another memory game, an even harder one, trying to remember his father’s face and voice from back in those days. Sometimes, when he looks in the mirror, it’s like someone else is staring back at him (what a silly thought - of course there is. There always are. Three someone’s, in fact. This is someone new. Or someone very, very old).
Lately, he thinks he sees his father in the mirror, hears him in his own laugh, in his fast food order, in the way his shoes clatter against the floor when he toes them off.
“Excuse me,” Asuka’s voice interrupts his thoughts. “Can I help you?”
“What?”
The polite confusion has disappeared from her voice, replaced by a weary irritation. “You’ve been staring at me for a while now. Unless, were you interested in this book?” She closes the book she was reading, placing it in her lap. “It’s an interesting read. I try to keep up with the latest dueling strategies.”
“I, ah,” Yuya pauses. She would never understand anyway. He should say his mind wandered, apologize and spend the rest of this nice afternoon in the quiet ambiance of the park, just resting, as he intended.
He says, “I’m sorry, you just reminded me of someone I knew.”
She’d make a great poker player, because no surprise shows on her face. The irritation lessens, though, a small smile floating at the edge of her lips as she takes off the glasses and places them atop her book. Like this, she looks even more like the Asuka he remembers. “I get that a lot. I duel on the traditional circuit.”
“You’re a pro-duelist?”
“Yep,” she taps the book. “I won last week, barely. Thought I’d stop by Paradise City to see my brother duel while he’s in town, and research some of the new techniques.”
An Asuka who never met his father, an Asuka who never knew war, who went to school and graduated, and lived a normal (or as normal a pro-duelist could have) life. Something in between nostalgia and envy stirs in his chest, but he’s unsure whether that’s his or Yuri’s heart.
When Yuya doesn’t answer, she continues, “Or maybe you’re mixing me up with Fubuki. My brother, he’s a pretty well-known dueltainer.” Some of the annoyance returns. “People say we look alike. I don’t really see it, but maybe that’s what it is?”
Tenjouin. Fubuki Tenjouin. He’s a bit after Yuya’s time, but a pretty successful dueltainer whose posters still plaster the town. Buki, that’s his stage name, although he heard he goes by Rhodie in the west. The background knowledge slams into Yuya suddenly, enough so that he has to feign a cough to hide his shock.
He didn’t even know she had a brother. Little details that he forgot, or maybe never remembered, the incomplete picture from the memory puzzle.
“Does it make you happy? Dueling, I mean.” he blurts out. It sounds ruder than he intended. It sounds like something his father would say.
He expects her to answer positively, or maybe he hopes she will. Or maybe she’ll answer with surprise at the non-sequitur. She doesn’t.
“I loved dueling,” she says instead.
“I love dueling,” she corrects herself.
The wind picks up. The trees shake loose a few leaves, their shadows distorting into new shapes over the park goers seeking their shade. It must be a trick of the light when Asuka’s expressions darken.
Her eyes are far away when she says, “Being happy, or having fun, sometimes dueling is more complicated than just enjoying it. The stakes get too high, and you start to lose yourself in the duel. You lose yourself to the idea of winning. Isn’t that ironic?”
Yuya is struck by the heaviness in her words. Bitterness lingers, worn down with time, at the edge of her voice, like an ace card creased and fraying at the corners from too many desperate draws.
Suddenly realizing how gloomy the mood has become, her eyes widen in embarrassment, “I don’t know why I just told you all that, haha! Sorry! That doesn’t answer the question, does it? I suppose it does make me happy.”
“Oh, you don’t have anything to apologize for,” Yuya responds in turn. “If anything, I should apologize for my rudeness in asking. I appreciate the honest answer.”
“And what about you, Mr…?”
“Sakaki. Yuya Sakaki.” He responded without thinking. Cringing internally, he braces himself for the derision or adoration that usually accompanies people finding out his name, but she only appears mildly surprised.
“Oh, like the dueltainer!” (Because of course that’s how everyone knows him.) “I’m Tenjouin. Asuka Tenjouin.”
I know , Yuya doesn’t say.
“My brother and I watched you duel when we were kids. He always tried to imitate your moves.”
“Oh?” Really, he’s glad. Grateful, even. He should be grateful.
“I studied you.” She says it so matter-of-factly that it jars Yuya.
“What?”
“I studied you,” she repeats. “Pendulum summons, right? I struggled a lot with it when I first started dueling, but watching your duels helped me learn. Even beat Fubuki once I got the hang of it.”
He can’t imagine Asuka as a little girl, poring over his duels to learn pendulum summoning, ignoring his antics altogether. There’s something so earnest about the image. Thank you , he wants to say, and this time, it’s not just a platitude.
“So?”
“Sorry?” Yuya blinks.
“What about you, Mr. Sasaki? Does dueling make you happy?”
He can’t answer that.
Yes. No. Yes, but it’s like she said, isn’t it? Sometimes it’s more complicated than just enjoying the duel.
She’s a stranger in this world, he reminds himself. Just say yes . He clenches his teeth, fighting down the words that clamor up his throat. They come pouring out despite his resistance.
“I loved dueling to make other people smile. When I was a kid, I thought it was fun, and everyone in the audience was having fun with me.”
He recalls the confetti, and the big screens, and the posturing. The cheers that hurt his ears, and his smile so wide that his cheeks hurt even more. “But the older I got, the more it felt like there was this… burden.”
It’s funny how time changes things, how the most impactful thing he’d achieved in his life was twenty years ago, and that he peaked at just fourteen years old. He should have been able to look back and say, how silly my problems were back then , but his ears ring even now with that awful cheering. He isn’t even really sure why he’s telling her about this, since he can’t explain.
How he lays awake sometimes, unable to sleep, replaying duels from decades ago that could have gone differently in a million different ways.
How when he came back, he had thrown himself into dueltaining. The normalcy helped. Everyone cheered with him again, not just at him, but with him, the way it should have been.
And then, after a year or two passed, the cheering only got louder, but the smile on Yuya’s face was painted on.
“Like everyone was watching me. And then, I guess it wasn’t so fun anymore.”
He cracks as big a smile as he can and waves his hand in front of his face, as if clearing the air physically. “Haha, listen to this old man drone on.”
But Asuka regards him with sharp eyes, pinning his smile in place. “You know, Mr. Sakaki, you remind me of someone I once knew, too.”
“Do I?”
“Yes,” she says simply. Flatly. “He was a phenomenal duelist. Loved to have fun with everyone, took every chance he could to duel.”
She smirks at the memory, derisively. “He wasn’t very good at anything else, but he was a great duelist.” Her brow furrows, as she says, softly, “I think we pushed him too far. Everyone relied on him because of his dueling, but it made it hard for him to have fun after that.”
“How’s he doing now?” Yuya asks.
Asuka hums in contemplation. “I wonder,” she says. “Well, I hope. I haven’t seen him since we graduated high school.”
The teenagers nearby shout as their friend falls off his skateboard into their carefully arranged duel field, scattering their cards.
“So boisterous,” Asuka tuts, but her expression relaxes, and her polite smile returns. “My friend used to be like that, too.”
“Like the duelists or like the skateboarder?”
“Both,” she laughs. “At least when I first met him.”
The skateboarder takes a sweeping bow as his friends jokingly boo him. Me too .
She turns her gaze back to Yuya, away from the teens as they scramble to pick up all their cards. “I should get going. My brother will want to see me before his duel starts tonight,” she says with affectionate exasperation. “But it was nice meeting you, Mr. Sakaki. Maybe we could duel sometime. For fun.”
“For fun,” Yuya promises. “It was nice to meet you, too, Ms. Tenjouin.”
It’s not technically a lie.
He leans back against the bench, and allows himself a small smile as he sits under the shade alone, settling into the quiet.