"You've got to be kidding me!"
Lost never could have imagined that on this stretch of road, one that usually never saw a single passerby, someone would actually fall from the sky.
There was no time to dodge.
The D-Wheel was moving far too fast. By the time Lost noticed Miles falling from midair, she couldn't even slow down.
She should have listened to Aoyao and not gone speeding in the first place.
If you asked how she felt right now, it was nothing but regret.
Following traffic laws was important. Drive irresponsibly, and your family sheds tears.
Miles: "Aaaaaaah!"
Lost: "Aaaaaaah!"
Instant crash.
Even though Miles did his best to adjust his posture in midair and reduce the impact of the fall, once he actually hit the ground and collided with Lost's D-Wheel at point-blank range, there was no avoiding a spectacular wipeout, man and bike both overturned.
"Ugh, that hurts! Wait, this is bad! Did I send someone flying?!"
Thanks to the protective suit and helmet embedded with magical arrays, Lost herself hadn't been seriously hurt in the crash.
But in the split second of impact, she had clearly seen herself knock the person who fell from the sky flying away.
The proof was that the front of her D-Wheel was practically totaled.
"He's not dead, is he? Damn it, getting sent flying at that speed, with no protective gear, that has to be fatal!"
Even as a delinquent girl, Lost was usually just carefree and brash. She had never actually committed any truly serious crimes.
"This is bad, Lost."
Having finally caught up and witnessed the entire accident from behind, Aoyao looked panicked.
"I told you not to ride so fast. Now you're done for. Hitting someone is a minimum of ten years!"
"Th-this, this can't really be my fault, can it?"
So nervous, she started stuttering, Lost insisted on defending herself.
"This guy fell from the sky. That's basically a suicide jump, right? E-even if he hadn't hit my D-Wheel, he would've smashed to death anyway!"
"That… actually kind of makes sense."
Aoyao looked up. This road backed onto the city's tallest clock tower. The only way someone could have fallen from above was from the clock tower.
Aoyao's expression changed sharply. "Was this an accident… or a murder?"
"I've seen stuff like this in novels!" Lost suddenly realized. "Maybe he was heartbroken and chose to end it all!"
"Either way, Lost, go check on him first."
"Eek!" Lost looked terrified. "It's going to be all bloody and mangled, right?!"
Of course, Lost knew there was no way she could rely on an introverted girl like Aoyao in a situation like this.
"Fine, I'll go!"
After swallowing hard a few times, Lost steeled herself.
Even if she was a delinquent, she never ran from responsibility. That was her personal creed.
Forcing herself to move, Lost had already prepared herself to see a gruesome, dismembered corpse.
"Huh! Th-this is…!"
Yet what appeared before her left her shocked, mouth hanging open, for the second time that day.
"So, how bad is it?" Aoyao hopped off her D-Wheel and peeked from behind, anxiously asking.
"Well… how do I put this…"
There was none of the gore Lost had imagined. The 'body' was astonishingly intact.
Looking closely, there didn't even seem to be any blood. The boy's face, dust-streaked as it was, was surprisingly handsome.
"Someone like this would really kill himself over love?"
Lost's feelings were complicated. If not for this absolutely disastrous way of meeting, she might have thought this was fate arranged by the heavens.
Unfortunately, falling from that height and getting hit by a speeding D-Wheel meant that, intact or not, no normal person could still be alive.
"There's no choice. We should call the police…"
After confirming the scene, Lost made the correct decision of a law-abiding citizen.
There was just one thing she got wrong.
"Ah, that hurts. Really hurts!"
After briefly losing consciousness, Miles woke up rubbing his head.
"Even with a reinforced body, taking that kind of impact still hurts, huh."
Of course, despite the impact, it only hurt. Nothing more.
At least, Miles couldn't feel any other problems with his body.
The body refined by Viel wasn't just powerful. Its defensive capability was top-tier as well.
Otherwise, back during the battle in the royal capital, Luca's body wouldn't have been able to endure the flames of the Sun God for that long, allowing the soul to perish before the body was all burned away.
"(キ｀?Д??)!!!"
Watching Miles wake up with their own eyes, Lost and Aoyao could do nothing but freeze in shock, their expressions vacant.
A fall from a great height, getting hit by a speeding D-Wheel, the D-Wheel itself wrecked…
And yet the victim was alive.
Not just alive, he didn't even seem badly hurt.
After getting back on his feet, it finally dawned on Miles that he had caused trouble.
He'd done a leap of faith from a rooftop and ended up smashing into someone.
Miles didn't know the other party had been speeding. From his perspective, it felt like his fault was the bigger one.
Then he noticed Lost and Aoyao staring at him with expressions like they'd seen a ghost.
What's this? Aren't these old acquaintances?
If they were familiar faces from Synchron Academy, then this probably wasn't a big deal.
"Are you okay, Lost?"
Looking over the crash site, it seemed Lost's D-Wheel had been smashed by him.
Well, if compensation was due, then it had to be paid. It wasn't like he couldn't afford it.
"(キ｀?Д??)?"
Still wearing that ghost-seeing expression, Lost now looked even more confused after Miles spoke.
"W-wait… what did you just call me?"
"Lost. You're Lost Vila from Synchron Academy, right?"
"You actually… know me?!"
Looking closer, even with dust on his face, wasn't this an unbelievably handsome boy?
And someone like that actually knew her, and even spoke in such a caring tone.
In that instant, the lovestruck delinquent girl seemed to completely forget the strange fact that the boy in front of her had fallen from the sky, been hit by a D-Wheel, and walked away unscathed.
"You all have partners, so where's my happiness supposed to be?"
Could it be that her prayer had been heard by the gods?
A super handsome boy descending from the sky. This was the real deal, a true heaven-sent encounter.
Gently twirling her long golden hair around her finger, Lost showed a rare, girlish shyness she hadn't displayed in years.
"I-I'm fine~"
Aoyao: "I-I'm fine? …Lost, did you hit your head?"
"Don't be silly. I'm perfectly fine."
"Ugh! You creep!"
Instant visceral disgust from her roommate.
Miles said, "I'm glad you're okay. As for the D-Wheel repair costs, I'll compensate you, but I don't have any money on me right now."
The gold card with a remaining balance of 2.2 million was currently still with Aisha.
"Compensate me for my D-Wheel?" Lost glanced at her totaled D-Wheel.
She was the one who'd been speeding and violating traffic rules, and she'd even sent him flying. Yet this mysterious, handsome boy had actually offered to pay for her D-Wheel's repair costs.
Just how good of a person was he?
He was blindingly dazzling.
Even with only the last glow of sunset left on the horizon, the outline of the boy's figure under the sunset's light still shone brilliantly in Lost's eyes.
"No need! How could I let you pay!" Lost shook her head and refused with a serious expression.
"Huh, you don't need me to pay?" Miles said, delighted. "Didn't think you'd be that easy to talk to, Lost~"
From Miles' impression of this delinquent girl, he'd assumed that after smashing her D-Wheel, she absolutely wouldn't let him leave without compensation, and would keep pestering him.
"If I don't have to pay, then I'm heading off." Miles smiled and waved at Lost.
"Y-you're leaving?" Lost froze in place.
That's it? He's just going?
Isn't this the fateful encounter the heavens granted her?
She had to do something!
"Wait a second!"
Lost immediately called out to Miles as he turned to leave.
"Hm? What is it?"
"Um…"
Her mind spinning faster than ever as she studied Miles from head to toe, Lost's gaze finally landed on the Spirit Eyes on his arm.
"You're a Duelist too?"
"Of course."
"Then duel me!"
Under the sunset, Lost lit up the Spirit Eyes on her arm, burning like fire.
This was the only way Lost could think of, racking her brain, to keep Miles from leaving.
"A duel?" Miles looked troubled.
Normally, with Miles' card addiction, he would never refuse a duel invitation.
However, given the current situation, Miles had only just obtained this brand-new body, and he still hadn't tried activating Spirit Eyes in an official duel.
More importantly, there was the deck.
He did have the Drytron/Ursarctic deck taken from the experimental version, but Miles still didn't know how well the deck actually matched his Spirit Eyes.
"If you don't duel, then you don't really know each other. As a Duelist, you're not going to run away, are you!"
Abandoning the girlish, bashful act that didn't suit her at all, Lost's tone snapped back to normal.
That was more like her. Dueling was what fit her best.
Anyway, Lost's original standard for finding a partner had always been that it had to be someone stronger than her.
"All right, if you want to duel that badly."
The word "running away" didn't exist in Miles' dictionary.
He'd treat it as a duel test for his new body. Miles also lit up the Spirit Eyes on his arm beneath the sunset.
What Miles least expected was that once Spirit Eyes activated in a duel, a fully loaded deck appeared inside it immediately.
It didn't even give Miles a chance to switch in the Drytron deck he was carrying.
"Wait, this deck is…?"
Miles raised his arm and carefully examined the Spirit Eyes, now lit up.
Most people's Spirit Eyes were a single, pure gemstone-like color.
While inside Miles' Spirit Eyes, beyond the pure white glow, there seemed to be a strange pattern embedded within.
A neat square shape, with a -_-? expression.
That was obviously Mokey Mokey.
When Miles flipped the top card to confirm, sure enough, it was Aisha's deck.
Aisha's deck should still have been on Aisha herself.
So why could he use it remotely?
"Can you hear me, Miles?"
"That voice, Aisha!"
Or rather, the one who would call him "Miles" directly should be Dark Aisha, who lived in the Millennium Puzzle's room.
Even though he wasn't carrying the Millennium Puzzle on him, Dark Aisha's voice still transmitted straight into his mind.
"Listen to me first, Miles. After you obtained your new body, the soul room seems to have changed."
"The room changed?"
"A lot of doors appeared inside. I observed for a long time before I finally reached a conclusion."
No wonder that even though she could communicate with him, Dark Aisha hadn't spoken since he obtained his body. She'd been studying the changes in the soul room.
"What conclusion?"
"These doors represent all the decks you've ever used, Miles."
"What?!"
Inside the soul room, in front of Dark Aisha, doors of various patterns were tightly shut, with only the door painted with the tofu-block Mokey Mokey standing open.
There was nothing inside the doorway, but the act of opening it signified the activation of that deck.
"You can even switch the Spirit Eyes form by opening and closing the doors. Like this."
As she spoke, Dark Aisha closed the door painted with the tofu block, then opened the adjacent door engraved with an "H" mark.
"Spirit Eyes form switch, Hero Form!"
Correspondingly, the pattern inside Miles' Spirit Eyes changed from Mokey Mokey into the "H" mark.
"It's the HERO deck!"
After being washed in a special glow, Miles flipped through the deck again to confirm.
The deck had plainly changed from Aisha's jank deck into the HERO deck Ren used.
"So that's what it means!"
By switching the Spirit Eyes' form, changing the pattern engraved within it, Miles could swap into different decks he had used before.
He didn't know what the underlying principle was, but this function was even more convenient than Soul Traversal.
"Aisha, how many different patterned doors are there in the soul room right now?"
"Mm, there's the Mokey Mokey-mark door, the H-mark door, the six-pointed-star door, and three more doors with three different dragon patterns drawn on them."
Stardust girl blurted out, "One of them should be me!"
"That's the one! Aisha, open the Stardust Dragon door!"
If he was going to duel Lost, this deck would be perfect to face her with.
Bathed in brilliant stardust light, the pattern inside Miles' Spirit Eyes transformed into the pattern of Stardust Dragon.
Of course, to be more precise, it was the pattern of Stardust Spark Dragon that Krista used.
"Spirit Eyes form switch! Confirm, Stardust Form!"
...
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