Disclaimer: I don't own anything in this fanfic unless I created it myself. Anything that I did create was inspired by something owned by someone else. This is done for fun and entertainment, not for profit.
Fandom: Yu-Gi-Oh GX
Title: Caught Up
Romance: slight hints of pre-Asuka x Manjoume
Word Count: 2,180
Genre: Humor, Friendship, Romance||Rated: G
Summary: Manjoume needs to be caught up on what he's missed. The duel with Psycho Shocker. The duel against SAL. Juudai and Asuka becoming fiances. WHAT?
Manjoume stared down at the tray of food in front of him. He wanted to wonder how anyone could offer trash like this to him, Manjoume Jun, but there was a bit of a problem with that. He was too hungry to care. After three months of scraping up meals wherever he could find them, he didn't care any more about what he ate, as long as he ate.
Grilled fish and rice poured down his throat, followed by green tea, and Manjoume couldn't have said for a fact that he tasted it at all. But it did warm his stomach, which was good enough.
Maybe I should get some more. He was about to yell for another plate when two people plopped down on the opposite side of the table and wrecked his appetite by doing so.
"What do you want?" He glowered at Juudai and Shou, both of whom just grinned back at him. Shou's grin wasn't that annoying as it wasn't as broad as Juudai's, but Juudai's took up most of his face, and Manjoume couldn't help but notice it.
"Just wanted to catch you up on what you've missed!" Juudai replied, stretching out and putting his feet up on the table. "You were gone three months, after all!"
Manjoume rolled his eyes and pushed his plate to the side. "Nothing happened here that I care about." That was true and not true. He wouldn't have minded getting caught up, but he didn't want to hear it from Juudai.
"Aw, come on! There's got to be something that you want to know about." Juudai closed his eyes, apparently thinking over what had happened. "I dueled a monkey!"
Oh, great, now they were going to make fun of him. "Sure you did. Did the monkey win?" He would buy it a lifetime supply of bananas if that were true. Both the dueling and if Juudai had been beaten by a monkey.
"Of course not!" Marufuji Shou glowering at someone was a sight to see, Manjoume decided. "Do you really think that a monkey could beat my aniki?" He grinned a little more, a bit of a vicious edge to it. "Especially since you couldn't? Three times!"
I just re-enrolled. I don't need to get arrested for murder. That was all that held Manjoume back from strangling Shou. Then again, he was a Manjoume. He was sure he could cover it up somehow if he really had to.
"Over the winter break, I dueled a real live Duel Spirit!" Juudai interjected. "Psycho Shocker! He tricked some Obelisks into sacrificing themselves to bring him to life."
"Right, right." Manjoume waved a hand, not believing any of this. If it weren't Sunday, he would have left for class. As it was, he didn't have anywhere else to be, and he didn't want to go back up to his far too small dorm room. At least this was a little entertaining. "Tell me another one."
Shou stuck one finger under his chin and his brow furrowed deeply. "Oh! A couple of weeks ago, this girl showed up! Only she was pretending to be a boy and she wanted to be close to nii-san! Aniki dueled her and she turned out to be a girl! An elementary school girl! She said she's going to come back next year, too."
Manjoume grinned as Juudai shuddered visibly, a hint of fear in his eyes. I think I like her already. Anyone who could make Juudai look like that was good enough in his book.
Other duels were mentioned, and Manjoume wasn't too surprised to hear that he might've dueled Misawa, if events had went differently. That would've been just as well by him; he owed Misawa a rematch one day anyway. He didn't pay too much attention to everything else, since it was an endless stream of 'Juudai won a duel against', and he'd had enough of that to last him two lifetimes.
He was about to open his mouth and tell them all about his own adventures (after all he'd defeated fifty other duelists in a span of a single day. Even Juudai hadn't done that!) when something that Shou said clicked in his mind.
"What did you say?" He wanted to be certain that he'd heard what he thought he'd heard.
Shou blinked a few times. "I said that aniki won a duel against Ayanokouji-senpai a little while after you left."
"After that." Manjoume's eyes narrowed. He didn't want to believe that he'd heard it. It couldn't be.
"Uh…I said that the duel was supposed to decide who Asuka-san's fiancé was?" Shou looked at him, then looked at Juudai. "Why?"
Manjoume didn't answer. He glared at Juudai, his hands balling into fists, and stalked out of the Osiris Red dining hall. This had to be some kind of a ridiculous joke! Yes, that was what it was! It was some kind of 'initiation prank'. He'd designed a few of those for younger students when he was in junior high.
How dare they! Treating me like I'm some sort of a child who would fall for that! As if Tenjoin-kun would ever stoop low enough to be engaged to someone like Yuuki Juudai! Nervous sweat streaked underneath his jacket despite the warmth of the afternoon.
Manjoume wasn't sure about where he was going, only that it wasn't anywhere near the Osiris building. He stared for a moment at the main building, but decided not to go there. It was Sunday and no one would be there doing anything anyway.
"Hey, aniki!" There it was again. Manjoume ignored it. It was no more worth listening to than…than Juudai was! "You're all upset, aniki! What's wrong? Tell me about it. Maybe I can help? Then you can help me find my brothers!"
"Shut up, zero attack," Manjoume muttered and hoped that no one had heard him. From the looks some of the people he passed gave him, they probably had. Lovely.
"I'm not zero attack, I'm Ojama Yellow!" The creature corrected him. "Come on, I'm your partner! Let me help you!"
"I don't need anything from you!" Manjoume shook his fist at the creature and wondered what it would take to get rid of it. Too bad he couldn't just toss the card.
As soon as the creature vanished, (Manjoume refused to think of it as Ojama Yellow, no matter what. Giving it a name would mean that it was real) Manjoume turned his thoughts back to the horrible prank that Juudai and Shou were trying to play on him.
He could go and ask Ayanokouji himself. Their two families ran in some of the same circles, and Ayanokouji's father had donated money to Chosaku's last election campaign. No. I'm going to make it without needing my family name. He could do it, and he would.
That left one other person that he could ask, and his skin prickled and tingled at the thought of doing so. He hadn't seriously talked to her since he'd returned here, though she'd been among those cheering his new cheer when he'd made his decision to stay. Come to think of it, she'd been with those who stood behind Juudai when he'd been ranting and raving at Manjoume's own brothers.
I'll do it. I'll ask her. No sooner had the thought crossed his mind than Manjoume found his footsteps leading him in the direction of the Obelisk Blue girl's dorm. If she wasn't there, then he was certain someone would be there who did know where she was. The island wasn't but so big. She would be there somewhere.
Many of the people that he passed gave him strange looks, but he was used to those after his return. Most of those who did so were Obelisk Blues, and he spied his own former followers among them. He sneered; those idiots meant nothing to him anymore. He didn't need people supporting him because of his name. He didn't need people supporting him at all. All he needed was himself.
Oh, and the ability to crush Juudai in a duel. But other than that, just himself.
Once he got there, he saw right away that Tenjoin-kun wasn't there. At least not on the outside. He cornered the first girl he saw, Kouchu something or other, and glowered at her. "Go ask Tenjoin-kun to come out here. I want to talk to her."
The girl eyed him for a moment, and he thought she was going to refuse, when a clear voice spoke from the doorway. "Manjoume-kun?"
There she was. Manjoume's heart skipped a beat or two, and he wondered why his cheeks burned without warning. He swallowed and worked to focus his mind as she stepped closer. Was she wearing perfume?
"Manjoume-kun?" She repeated his name as she came closer. Everyone else there had vanished from his mind as soon as she came where he could see her. "Did you want something?"
He swallowed again. "Y…yes, Tenjoin-kun. I wanted to know…" His mind twitched and twisted. "Uh, I heard that you and Juudai…uh…" Damn it! Why couldn't he think properly? What was it about talking to her that made him be like this? "Duel…Ayanokouji…" He swallowed again, not liking the way she tilted her head and looked at him. She had to think that he was an idiot. What else could she think when he sounded like one. "Fiancés?"
Her eyes narrowed as he blurted the last word out. It wasn't elegant and it made little sense, but at least he'd managed to say what he wanted to say. He hoped that she didn't want him to repeat all of that, much less be coherent.
"So you heard about that." It wasn't a question, which was just as well, since answers were still a little beyond him. Instead, he just nodded his head and hoped that she would clarify the matter. From the tilt of her head and the fold of her arms across her chest, she wasn't very happy about it.
For some reason he wasn't sure about (and he wasn't sure about it for several months to come) that made him very happy.
"Ayanokouji-senpai and Juudai dueled, because Ayanokouji-senpai was jealous of me and Juudai being friends." Asuka bit each word out, and Manjoume winced back at each one. "He mistook our conversation for something more than it was, which was me informing Juudai of your whereabouts, and insisting on dueling him with the winner being my fiancé."
Manjoume nodded and tried not to look as if the concept of Asuka and Juudai being too close bothered him too. He really wasn't sure if it did or not. Friends didn't bother him. Being fiancés bothered him.
"Once I explained to him what a fiancé was, Juudai and I agreed that we didn't want that. We're just friends." Asuka's gaze bored into him and Manjoume couldn't have moved another step if he had wanted to. He would have much preferred floating in her gaze forever. "Is that all that you need to know?" A thousand other questions surged through his mind. Had she missed him? Was she glad that he was back? He had to admit that he hadn't thought much about her while he was gone. Chronos, Misawa, and Juudai had dominated his mind. But she'd been there, when he'd been able to spare a few moments from hating the three of them.
His throat worked a little and his mind caught on something else that she'd said. "You explained what a fiancé was?"
"Yes. He didn't know." There was a hint of something in her expression, but Manjoume didn't know what it was. Amusement? Exasperation? Affection? She shook her head and her lips moved for a moment, but Manjoume didn't hear what she said, if anything. Instead, a sick sort of capering joy bounced in his heart.
He didn't even know what one was! She'd never like someone that stupid!
"Manjoume-kun?" That struck through his fog of joy and he straightened up a little.
"I didn't believe it when I heard it. To try to hand someone off like that…" He shook his head in true disbelief. He'd have to do something about Ayanokouji, once the chance came. Maybe tromp him in a duel. That would be worthwhile. "I wanted to be sure I hadn't heard wrong."
Tenjoin-kun's lips parted in a bit of a smile. "I see." She glanced at him for a moment, and he wondered if she were going to say something else. "I have some homework that I need to finish. See you later."
She turned and took the first steps back inside before she paused and looked back over her shoulder. "It's good to have you back, Manjoume-kun."
He had no chance to speak before she was gone. If he'd looked down, he wouldn't have been surprised at all to see himself floating an inch or better off the ground.
"Hey, aniki! I have a cousin, Ojama Red, and you look just like him right now!"
"Shut up, zero attack! Just shut up!"
The End