Disclaimer: I own nothing involved in this story unless I invented it myself. This is written for fun, not for profit. All forms of feedback eagerly accepted. Concrit is loved the most, but everything is welcome.
Fandom: Yu-Gi-Oh GX
Title: Did It For Him
Characters: Shou, Johan, Fubuki
Word Count: 1,500||Status: One-shot
Genre: Friendship||Rated: G
Challenge: Written for the Diversity Writing Challenge, section C58, write an unusual friendship; Written for the 2015 Advent Challenge, day #10, write about a personal headcanon & review a favorite author; One Character Boot Camp, #17, reaction; Written for the Valentine's Day to White Day Advent, day 25, write about a confession; Written for the Halloween Advent, day 7, write about a change of plans
Notes: This takes place in between episodes 155 and 156, before Juudai returns from his honeymoon with Yubel.
Summary: Johan finds himself curious about why Shou started off as an Osiris Red, but his brother does not. So he asks.
Shou set out the cups of tea, his hands shaking only a little. He'd still not completely recovered from everything that happened in Dark World, but no one else had either, so no one was surprised. They simply reached for the tea, murmuring polite thanks as they did.
Johan took a few careful sips of his before he turned toward Shou. "This is really good. I didn't know you could make tea like this."
"My mother taught me how," Shou said, savoring a few sips of his own. "She runs a teashop back home."
"That's really neat," Johan said. His fingers brushed almost absently by the empty deck holder on his waist, then he pulled his attention back to the conversation. "What about your dad?"
"He's an accountant." Shou's lips turned up for a moment. "They still haven't figured out how they got two duelists in the family."
Johan's own lips quirked. "They got lucky?" More than a few chuckles came from the rest of the group sitting around enjoying their tea.
Shou swirled the tea in his cup and stared at it thoughtfully. "Something like that. Dad really didn't know what he was getting into when Ryou first started dueling. He thought it would just be something that we'd both grow out of."
"And you didn't," Asuka said. Shou nodded at once.
"How could we?" No on argued; the very idea of 'growing out' of dueling was ridiculous. Dueling wasn't a child's game. As they'd learned all too recently for some of their own comfort, it could mean life and death, in the most literal of senses.
Before the atmosphere could get too tense, Johan asked something else. "Your brother started in Obelisk Blue, didn't he? I remember reading that on the school webpage once."
Shou nodded, perking up a little at the subject change. "That's right. He attended the junior high school after he got back from Principal Samejima's Cyber Dojo. That's why he got into Obelisk Blue right away."
He ignored Kenzan's mild grumbling about something or other in favor of having more of his tea. Johan leaned back, eyes half-closed, before he started to speak again.
"But you didn't, did you?"
Shou shot him a slightly wary look. He wasn't quite as jealous as he had been when the year began, but he still wasn't all that close to Johan. The Gem Beast Duelist kept on talking.
"You started off in Osiris Red. So you didn't go to the school, right?"
Shou fidgeted. He'd always kind of wondered why no one bothered to ask him about this before. Manjoume and Asuka, Kenzan and Rei, Jim and O'Brien, as well as Fubuki-san, all gave him curious looks now. Maybe they hadn't thought about it. Maybe they wanted him to say something about it first. But clearly the question interested them too.
"No, I didn't." It really wasn't a secret. It was just one of those things that he'd never bothered talking about before. He fidgeted with his cup a little, and he could almost hear every one of them wanting more details on it. He stared down into the liquid for several long, silent minutes before he finally looked up at Fubuki. "I guess you could sort of say that that it was because of you."
Fubuki blinked a few times, the rhythm of his strumming on his ukelele faltering. "Me? What did I do?"
Shou looked away again, then back. "When my big brother first started at Duel Academia, he sent us letters and e-mails about you and the other people that he'd met here. He was..." Shou struggled to find the right words. "He was happy."
'Happy' didn't seem to be a word that most people associated with the Kaiser, no matter what. But Shou remembered those days, when his brother spoke of friends he'd made and how close they all were. He didn't remember all of their names, but he would never forget how genuinely happy Ryou had been back then.
"But then in the early part of his second year, he sent back a message that one of his friends had vanished. And then another one, a couple of weeks later." Shou glanced at Fubuki, who fidgeted more and more, then let out a small, weak laugh.
"Oh. I kind of forgot about that."
Asuka sighed, shaking her head. "So that's why you decided to try for the test?"
"Sort of." Shou swirled his tea around some more. "When Ryou came home that year for the holidays, he didn't look happy anymore. He wasn't miserable, but he wasn't happy. I didn't know what to do. I knew how to duel, but I wasn't all that good at it." He didn't say what he'd thought at the time: that he never would be, certainly never on his big brother's level.
Johan leaned forward. "So what did you do?" He sounded as if he couldn't wait to hear what else the story contained. Shou wondered if Juudai would've had the same reaction, and thought that he might well have.
Once that might've bothered him. Right now, with Juudai gone to who knew where for who knew how long, he kind of liked it.
"For the rest of that year, I wasn't sure on what to do. But my friend Satomi Kai told me if I wanted to do anything to help my brother, I wasn't going to be able to do it sitting in a standard high school classroom. I'd have to duel."
He rubbed the back of his head and grinned a little. "You guys would love Kai. She's tough. She plays a deck of Normal female warrior monsters. She beat me all the time back before I came here."
"So why didn't she come?" Asuka asked curiously. "She sounds like she'd be a good fit here."
"She didn't want to be a duelist. She's going to culinary school once she graduates high school, so she can take over the family business." He winced suddenly. "I need to send her an e-mail. I don't think I've had the chance since..." He ran over the time in his head and winced again. "Since before we ended up in that world of sand." Months. It had been months. Kai was going to shred him alive.
He shook his head; he'd take care of that later. "Anyway, it was because of her that I decided I was going to try to get into Duel Academia. If I made it, I'd be able to at least watch my brother and make sure he didn't vanish. Somehow." He didn't say what else he'd wanted: to somehow find a way to find his brother's friends and bring them back to him. He hadn't let on to anyone about that, not even Juudai.
"To be honest, I still didn't think I'd get in then." When he'd found out he had, he'd pinched himself until his arm bruised, convinced he'd been dreaming. It had taken him until after he and Juudai dueled the Labyrinth brothers to genuinely believe he had a chance to do anything here. And even now, when at least one of Ryou's friends had returned, he wondered on occasion.
"Well, you did, and you've been doing great!" Johan declared, eyes bright with confidence. "You know, I think we should have a duel one day." He started to reach for his deck, then his hand dropped. "Yeah… one day."
Shou winced; Johan had lent his deck to Juudai for the last duel against Yubel, and when Juudai went off to become an adult – whatever that meant – he'd taken it with him. Everyone else who'd come back had their decks with them, even the ones that had had their duel disks and decks buried in Dark World. Shou had to chalk that one up to Juudai and his strange Haou powers, but Johan's deck hadn't made the trip back with them.
He squared his shoulders. "Right. You let me know when you're ready to duel and I'll be there." Johan had done his best to help Juudai, and that was what Shou cared about the most. Helping his brothers, whether they were blood-related to him or not. If Johan helped Juudai, then Johan was his friend. That was just how it worked. It didn't matter if Johan wanted to call Juudai 'aniki' or not.
Johan's smile lit up the room. "You got it." For a moment, the smile faltered. "I heard we're supposed to go back to our schools in a few days. I want to… I really want to duel you before then."
What he meant was that he wanted Juudai to be back before then, with his Gem Beasts. Shou could read that much between the lines. It really wasn't that hard.
"Yeah. I think we will. I know we will." Juudai would be back. The others would falter on that, hesitate in believing in Juudai, but Shou knew he wouldn't. And now he knew that Johan wouldn't either.
The End
Note: Thank you for reading and I hope that you enjoyed the story. Please let me know what you thought of it if at all possible.