Chapter 97: Isn't This Just a Complete Disaster?
All the duel data from the HERO battle funneled into the reward card, and the academy's Eva system delivered its verdict.
Corresponding to the Destiny HERO card slot, the ultimate D: Destiny HERO - Plasma.
Amano had had a feeling, actually, even before the reveal. If the evaluation was genuinely tied to performance rating, and the Destiny HERO card worthy of a 5+ score had to be one single monster, Plasma was the only candidate that made sense. Invincible, iconic, the undisputed king of the archetype.
Finesse's main deck had finally received its first Destiny HERO with actual fighting ability.
Finesse: "Amano! This monster! This monster!"
Her excitement was hard to miss even through the mental channel.
Completely understandable. Any duelist who used HEROes, or frankly any HERO archetype at all, seeing this card materialize had every right to be excited.
Finesse: "This monster is so weak! It takes three Tributes to summon and only has 1900 ATK!"
Amano: "..."
He was beginning to understand why Latir had never approved of her little sister. He was getting there slowly, but he was getting there.
He thought briefly about what it would be like to have a little sister who was simultaneously this reckless and this unaware of her own recklessness. Following a notorious murderer around to investigate. Challenging a Dark Game practitioner with a Destiny HERO deck that had, until recently, no Fusion Monsters. Seeing Destiny HERO - Plasma and commenting that it was weak.
Finesse. You have a long road ahead of you.
Meanwhile, across the arena, Kikawayu Yuu had not taken his eyes off Finesse's direction since the duel ended.
Kikawayu: "Why does Finesse keep giving me this feeling that Rei is the one playing? Especially during the duel. The way she moved, the way she talked, it was too similar."
A voice answered from nearby that only Kikawayu could hear.
"I'm not detecting any anomaly on my end. You've probably just been affecting yourself from what's been going on in your room the last few days. Try to hold back a little more."
Kikawayu: "If you weren't telling me to wait until I'm twenty, would I even be this pent up?"
The other voice did not dignify that with a response.
Amano, having experienced Kikawayu's terrifying instincts firsthand, had already slipped out of the arena the moment the duel was confirmed over, putting distance between himself and anyone who might ask questions.
Two hours later, the Hacker Invasion timer expired.
Amano's consciousness returned to his own body. He opened his eyes to the familiar white ceiling of the Synchro Academy nurse's office.
Good. No one had apparently noticed anything suspicious in the two hours he'd been lying there.
Or so he thought, until he turned his head and found someone sitting at the edge of the bed.
Nanki'in Sakuya. Watching him with a blank expression.
Why.
Amano's brain produced a full column of question marks topped with cold sweat.
"You're finally awake, Amano." Her voice carried something that sounded, unexpectedly, like genuine concern. "You were sleeping so heavily I thought you'd died. I couldn't even tell you were breathing for a moment. Is it because of what happened with Shio yesterday? Or something else?"
"I've been a bit worn out lately. Slept longer than I meant to." He pushed himself upright. "How long have you been sitting there, class rep?"
"Two hours."
She had followed him from the classroom without a gap and sat here for the entire two hours.
Amano had absolutely no framework for explaining this.
"Was there something you needed from me?"
As she answered, Sakuya handed him a cup of warm water. He took it automatically.
"I thought you might be exhausted because of everything you handle for Class 1-E. I'm not a very useful class rep, so a lot of things end up falling on you. The least I could do was be here."
Drained enough to need a delinquent class rep personally watching over him in the nurse's office. His actual role in Class 1-E consisted mainly of letting people copy his homework and passing notes during exams. Apparently Nanki'in Sakuya's assessment of that contribution was substantially more generous than his own.
The nurse's office door burst open.
It was the lunch break, and Class 1-E had arrived in a body, piling through the entrance with the collective energy of people who had been holding their worry in for two hours and could no longer contain it.
"Committee Rep, are you alright?!"
"If something happened to you I don't know how I'd go on!"
"We've been planning on following you forever, you can't just leave us!"
How. He had taken a sick day and slept for two hours. Why did the room have the atmosphere of a deathbed vigil.
Sakuya looked mildly bewildered herself. She had also been in the nurse's office the entire time and no one had apparently spared a single thought for their class representative's wellbeing.
"We all heard from Kozuka-san, Committee Rep!"
Kozuka?
Only then did both Amano and Sakuya notice Kozuka Yoka squeezed into the crowd somewhere near the back.
"We heard from Kozuka-san! She said you saved her life in a Dark Game two nights ago!"
Kozuka Yoka had recovered well enough to return to class that morning. According to her account, she had originally followed Amano out of class that night to see what Rin Seiya wanted with him, motivated by her self-appointed duties as the Class 1-E shipping captain and concerned guardian of Sakuya's romantic interests. What she had encountered instead was the Dark Game practitioner who had been circulating as an urban legend.
By the time Kozuka's LP had run out and she was on the verge of losing consciousness, the last person she had seen running toward her was Amano Rei.
When she woke up, she was in a medical recovery pod in the Academy City hospital.
"The Committee Rep saved me!" Kozuka had apparently been emphatic about this part. "And Dark Games take a huge toll on the duelist who fights them, so he must have been completely drained, which is why he took sick leave!"
That explained the deathbed atmosphere.
Kozuka had handed the entire class a fully assembled narrative and they had accepted it without question.
Sakuya stood very quietly for a moment.
She had heard her grandfather speak of Dark Games before. Extremely dangerous ritual duels. Genuinely life-threatening.
And suddenly several things that had not made sense clicked into place. Amano yawning through the next morning's class. Rin Seiya coming to return his damaged uniform shirt. She had reprimanded him for it, coldly, assuming the worst. Meanwhile the actual explanation was that he had spent the night fighting a Dark Game to save a classmate.
I am genuinely terrible.
If the rest of Class 1-E hadn't been present she would have slapped herself.
"I'm sorry, Amano. I had the wrong idea entirely."
[NANKI'IN SAKUYA] [AFFECTION +2] [AFFECTION: 68]
Not only had the point she'd lost returned, it had come back with interest. He would have to thank Kozuka Yoka properly at some point.
Kozuka, meanwhile, had picked up a scent she found deeply interesting. Her eyes had gone bright.
She spread her arms wide, began slowly backing toward the door, and herded the entire Class 1-E crowd ahead of her like she was redirecting livestock.
"Back up, back up! Give the class rep and the committee rep some space! Nobody interrupt them!"
The door closed. The room contained exactly two people.
In the process of clearing the room, Kozuka had also managed to collect the school nurse, who had been quietly eating her lunch in the corner, and remove her from the premises as well.
Amano sat in the sudden quiet and tried to determine what to do next. He should probably leave. He'd been lying here for two hours and he was hungry and it was lunch break and staying was not doing anything productive.
"Amano. What does a Dark Game feel like?"
Sakuya spoke first.
"Nothing you'd want to experience. I hope you never have to find out for yourself." He meant it.
"My grandfather told me about them once. He said only a duelist who truly has no fear of darkness can win a Dark Game. And that he's been looking for someone like that for a long time."
"Your grandfather, huh."
The Nanki'in family patriarch. Retired to a background role now, presumably, but in organizations that ran on loyalty and history, the influence a founding generation carried didn't simply evaporate with a formal handover. A man like that, still searching for something after all these years.
What exactly was he looking for?
"Amano. Come back with me."
The warm water Amano had been drinking went sideways.
Sakuya, with completely unruffled composure, produced a tissue and cleaned up the situation.
"Back -- back with you? To the Nanki'in house?"
The Nanki'in family was the oldest established organization of its kind in all of Eden Tower. Sakuya was the sole legitimate heir of this generation. She was inviting him to her family home. If he did something that displeased the Nanki'in household, the most optimistic outcome involved being disposed of in a location that wouldn't be discovered for a significant amount of time.
"Not to my house. That would be too soon." Her tone hadn't changed at all. "But the family is holding a gathering in a few days. My grandfather will be attending. I'd like to invite you."
"If it's just a gathering..."
Amano checked the affection display.
68 points. Two points short of the next skill unlock. Opportunities to accumulate affection through their usual homework and exam arrangement were slowing down at this point. This might be exactly the opening he needed.
"Alright. I'll be there."
"Thank you, Amano. Grandfather will be very pleased."
The smile that crossed Sakuya's face was small by most standards. On Sakuya's face, it was practically enormous.
[NANKI'IN SAKUYA] [AFFECTION +1]
Correct decision. Definitively correct.
That afternoon, during class, Amano's VSN received a message from Finesse.
[Thank you so much for today, Amano! And by the way, big sis mentioned the family dinner next Monday -- you're coming too, right?]
[Me too?]
[Big family dinners have a lot of rules. Adult women without a male companion get talked about. You wouldn't want to see me get talked about, would you?]
Amano checked Finesse's affection.
89 points. One away from the reward threshold.
Affection always got harder to accumulate the closer you got to a milestone. This family dinner invitation might be exactly the kind of push that broke through the ceiling.
[Since you're asking me personally, I'll be sure to do you justice, young lady.]
[Haha, the way you talk is so funny, Amano. It's a date then! Next Monday evening.]
The message closed with a sticker of Winged Kuriboh laughing.
Wait.
Monday evening?
Family dinner. Family gathering.
A deeply unpleasant probability surfaced in Amano's mind.
He leaned across to the neighboring desk and kept his voice low.
"Class rep. The family gathering you mentioned -- when exactly is it?"
"Monday evening next week, if I'm remembering correctly."
"..."
"Is it only the Nanki'in family attending?"
"No, quite a few of the major families in Eden Tower will be there. Let me think... the Wein family and the Kaiba family, among others that you'd recognize."
Wrong. This was wrong. This was completely wrong.
This was a disaster.
He had accepted invitations to the same event from two different people. And the Kaiba family was also attending, which meant Kaiba Chiha would probably be there, which made the situation geometrically worse.
Amano sent polite cancellation messages to both Finesse and Sakuya simultaneously.
Both replies arrived almost at the same time.
Finesse: [No. I already told Father you're coming. You WILL be there.]
Nanki'in: [I already promised Grandfather. I can't cancel.]
He stared at both messages.
Were they coordinating with each other. Had they already figured out the overlap and decided that the appropriate response was to make him deal with the consequences in real time.
He was going to arrive at that dinner, and both of them were going to be there, and he had agreed to escort both of them.
What had he been thinking.
The answer, unfortunately, was that he had not been thinking. He had been thinking about affection points.
He could not do this purely for affection points again. The lesson was learned. He would not forget it.
This was not manageable.