# Crow's Hideout
The door creaked open, and Crow stepped inside alone, his jacket damp from the hardwork he put.
"Nothing," he said, before anyone could ask. "Me and my comrades checked and asked everywhere everyone we could. No boy who looks like you two, no girl who looks like her. Shinji and the others are still out there, but I wanted to come back and tell you as soon as possible."
Silence settled over the room.
"That's it." Celina finally said. "Hours, and nothing?"
"Celina—" Yuya started. Telling how much Crow is helping them and letting them stay.
"There's no point sitting if it didn't get us anywhere," she cut in, sharp. "Crow's tired. I know that. But trying isn't the same as actually finding her."
"Sorry, Yuya," Yume said. "But she's right. We can't just keep sitting here hoping someone else does it for us."
"I just need to get in contact with anyone from the Lancers," Sawatari added, pacing. "Ryo, Reiji, anyone. This waiting is driving me up the wall."
All three silently nodded.
"We'll be careful," Yume said, glancing toward Riley, who sat curled slightly on the old couch with Yuya. "We'll stay hidden. No one will notice just three faces in a city this big."
Crow just watched them. Yuya opened his mouth to argue again.
But they all went anyway.
# The Streets
Sawatari, Celina, and Yume stepped out into the evening together, the door of Crow's hideout swinging shut behind them.
The road curved past a row of half-collapsed buildings, boarded windows. Leaning at angles that looked one storm away from giving out completely. Then, just past a broken overpass, the street opened onto a cleaner stretch — shopfronts with real glass, a working streetlamp, a hint of the towering city glittering somewhere far above them, out of reach.
"This whole place really is split down from middle," Sawatari muttered, glancing between the wreckage behind and the city above. "Rich on one side, forgotten on the other."
"You noticed that all just now?" Yume said dryly.
"I was being thoughtful." Sawatari huffed, then stopped at the next junction, planting his hands on his hips. "Alright. I'm taking this road. You two take another or search differently as well. We'll cover more ground that way."
"You just want to be alone so you can complain without someone to correct you," Yume said.
"I want a 'different road,'" Sawatari said, already walking off without waiting for a response. "Try to keep up with the concept. And don't mock me, you newbie."
His footsteps faded around the corner, leaving Yume and Celina standing together at the junction, the silent city humming quietly around them.
Neither of them moved for a moment.
"...I suppose we should split up too," Celina said, glancing down one street, then the other.
"Yeah," Yume agreed. He didn't move either. "Your name is Celina, right?"
She turned, one eyebrow raised. "Did you forget already? Or are you just wasting time?"
"No, it's just—" He hesitated, rubbing the back of his neck. "It's stupid. Forget it."
"If it's stupid, saying it won't hurt." Her tone was flat, but she didn't walk away either.
Yume exhaled, looking somewhere just past her shoulder instead of at her directly. "Have you ever met someone named Ray?"
Celina's expression didn't change much, but something in her eyes sharpened. "No. And I haven't heard that name before."
"Are you sure?"
"I don't forget who I meet." Her voice came out clipped, almost offended by the question itself. "If I'd met someone by that name, I'd remember it."
"...Right. Sorry." Yume looked down at his hands. "It's just a word that's stuck with me since before I can remember anything else. Figured it couldn't hurt to ask."
Celina studied him for a moment, her sharpness softening just slightly, into something closer to curiosity.
"You really don't remember anything," she said. Not a question.
"Not really. Bits and pieces. A voice. A name. But nothing that connects to anything else." He shrugged, an attempt at looking unbothered that didn't quite land. "It's fine. I'm used to it by now."
"That doesn't sound fine."
"No," he admitted. "But it's what I've got."
Celina was quiet for a moment, looking out toward the glittering sky instead of at him.
"...I understand not remembering, a little," she said finally. "Not the way you mean it — I remember everything. Too much of it, sometimes. But I never had anyone to remember it with.'" She folded her arms, her voice staying level even as the words got harder to say. "In Academia, I didn't really made friends, nor someone with me. I had people and classmates I could talk to. But it's it. For a long time, I thought that was the same thing as having a friend."
"And now?"
"Now I don't think it ever was." She glanced at him. "Meeting all of the people in Standard Dimension and here. Watching Yuzu help me risk everything to warn people she'd never even met. Watching Yuya tear himself apart for her. I think I finally understand what the word is actually supposed to mean." A pause. "I don't know if I ever had it before this."
"What was it like?" Yume asked carefully. "Academia, I mean being there."
"Training. Evaluation. Being told what I was for, long before I was old enough to ask why." Her tone stayed even, almost clinical, like she was reciting facts about someone else. "Dueling wasn't a game there. It was a measurement. You learned that early, or you didn't last."
"What about before that? You must have been somewhere before Academia. With a family, right? What was that like?"
Celina's expression tightened.
"...We should split up," she said, her voice flat again, all the softness from a moment ago gone without a trace. "It's better to search that way. We're just wasting time standing here."
She turned and started walking before he could say anything else.
"Why are you following me?" She said, turning.
"I-Its good to search together then split apart."
Her expression hardened, voice could tell it. "You think I will be in danger if I'm alone? Are you looking down on me!?"
"N-No! I just thought sticking together is more good than alone. It's a unknown place. And I don't have any experience in searching someone."
She didn't say anything, but turned her eyes straight, and went on.
Both got at the abandoned houses. Those houses were almost broken and ready to become rubble. Only they looked in good shape.
"Have you seen me before?" Yume asked suddenly. "Before all of this. Before that championship."
Celina frowned. "No. Why would I have?"
"No reason," he said. "Just a feeling."
She didn't press him on it, and he didn't explain further — the flash of memory too faint and strange to put into words: a crowded street somewhere in Maiami, a gray cloak moving through the crowd, a pair of sharp eyes that passed over him and kept moving without ever really seeing him at all.
He hadn't known her name back then. He wasn't even certain, now, that it had really been her — only that something about the shape of that memory matched the girl walking beside him closely enough to ache.
Celina, for her part, remembered nothing of it. To her, that street had held nothing but a lost signature of an Xyz refugee, Shun, and a crowd of strangers. If their eyes had crossed for half a second among a hundred other faces, it hadn't registered as anything worth keeping.
"You're strange," she said eventually, not unkindly.
"Yeah," Yume agreed. "I get that a lot. Well, probably. I don't actually remember if I've heard it before."
That earned the faintest huff of something that might have been amusement, quickly buried again beneath her usual composure.
They walked the rest of the area in something that wasn't quite comfortable silence, but wasn't hostile either.
# Back at the Hideout
By the time they returned, almost an hour later, they saw outside, in the flat place that looked like a place for kids to play.
Crow stood on one side, a confident grin on his face. Across from him, Yuya stood. Shinji and Crow's other friends were there, watching.
"Crow called over, not taking his eyes off Yuya. "See Yuya. Riley likes my Dueling more, and food is more important"
Riley didn't look at either side. Just down at his dool.
"Guess we picked a good time to come back," Yume murmured.
Celina looked behind, seeing Sawatari coming.
"I didn't get any clue." He guessed. "Guess not you two as well."
Suddenly sirens roared. Numarios motorbikes got there. And all Security officers grabbed Yuya and all people. Not letting them move for a moment.
It happened to instantly that no one could comprehend.
"Oi," Shinji shouted. "Did you got followed?!" Looking at the three, he was also taken away
"Leave the kids!" Crow shouted. "They have done nothing!"
Sawatari, Yume and Celina were taken away by handcuffs. All of the people there.
"Riley!" Yuya shouted as he saw Riley shaking like he will pass out. Before his expression become confused as he saw a shadow image grabbing Riley and vanishing in an instant.