It started with a newspaper. Judai didn't read them often, but had decided, by chance, to pick one up at a local stand. While he often had precognitive notions, this was not one of those times. It was coincidence, at its cruelest.
He had been giving hell to a near-empty bottle of soy sauce when he saw the headline, his eyes running haphazardly over the words. It took him a moment to register the names. Time and life, they had worn the instant recognition away. He knew every last face and name, but their effects weren't instantaneous. It had been nine years.
Renowned Pro Duelist, Edo Phoenix found murdered. The world mourns, as authorities search for suspects.
He barely reacted, at first. How long had it been since he'd last seen Edo? Just shy of eight years, probably. They'd met once, since school, on accident. So what should he think? Slowly, he put down the bottle of soy sauce. There was nothing in it, anyway.
He cleared his throat, folding the paper into a crumpled rectangle. He didn't want to read the rest. Murdered? Really? And he had felt so much safer since the academy. But they weren't at all, were they? They all had enemies, especially front-liners like Edo.
He clutched the front of the paper tightly, the irrelevant news articles smudging onto his fingertips. The world mourns… the world mourns… Should he turn on the television?
He felt as if every fragment of the kitchen were expanded, thrust through his eyes with renewed clarity. Enlightenment, one might say. It had been too long. Well, that was obvious to anyone. No one had kept in touch. Perhaps the siblings had with each other, but that was the extent of it. Judai had not been the only straggler; he had not been alone in his desire to move on. But now… it seemed all too arbitrary. Edo's death, it was as shocking as it might have been years ago, if not more so. What should he do now?
For a moment, a smile graced his lips. Were the others doing this too, in their apartments? Were Sho, Manjoume and Asuka asking themselves the same questions? He didn't know, but a sorrowful need for ever-evasive meaning sent him to the ceiling. He would take action, then. That was his way, that would always be his way. He would act.
Standing felt good. It was progress, of a sort. He grabbed the paper and stuffed it into a shoulder bag. He would bring it with him. As he stood by the door of his apartment, he fidgeted. What was he missing? With a stroke of inspiration, he raced into his bedroom. His Osiris Red jacket. Dipping his toes into the memories was too much, maybe; he was longing to hold onto something a bit more material, as hope.
It was pressing his luck though, and he should have known. It was too much, all at once. He couldn't just jump back. The days of true Osiris-impulsion were even further behind than he dared to remember, and he couldn't reach for them so quickly. Something was bound to snap.
But, still being Judai, he didn't consider the jacket for another moment. He did stand by the door however, staring over his apartment. For some reason, he felt as if he were leaving it forever.
His home was certainly no extravagance. He was a duelist, he would always be a duelist, but he was certainly not what Edo… had been. His apartment was simple, at first glance. Much like him, it was comfortable, and grew more intricate with time. It was the sort of place that Judai had always wanted to live in.
He placed a callused finger to the light switch, leaving his six rooms in darkness. With a final glance, he locked the door behind him.
As Judai walked, he decided that nothing felt too different about the world. It was likely, as someone had once told him, that not everyone dueled after all.
He stood tall, his impeccable posture glaring against the rest of his personality. His head was always drawn upward, his slight cowlick pulling his neck like a string.
Where to first? It wasn't as if he knew where they lived. Not any of them… he thought sadly. But his feet had a mind of their own, and they decided to walk in the direction of the duel arena. There would be a memorial of some kind, maybe. The others might come, maybe. All possibilities were slim and hazy, but Judai knew they were the only ones on the horizon. There were other ways to go about this, yes, but they involved research and phone calls. Judai was a doer, not a thinker.
So he continued. As he did so, memories came filtering back. Of Edo, mostly. He felt sadder and sadder as he reminisced, recognizing the tragedy with honesty rather than sentimentality. The world had lost a great man. And murder… It was so much colder than any of the danger they'd faced before. It was reality, it was something unfixable. There was no way to be brought back from that kind of fate.
The walk was long, he knew. It might take him over an hour, if he didn't find a bus or something. As if to help him with his search, a sign appeared. A bus stop.
While he waited, and even after he boarded the bus, he allowed himself to consider his other friends. Sho, the boy who had once been his closest companion. It was hard to picture him as a man. Even after all he'd grown, both in height and confidence, it was hard to imagine him any differently than the way he'd once been. It was the same with the others. Manjoume, Asuka. Was Manjoume a father, moved beyond his petty envies; was Asuka fully grown as well, holding some force of power of the world? He didn't know, but a small part of Judai could not wait to learn. This was an adventure, in its way. Revisiting a past that he had put aside, rather than forgotten.
He took a breath, smiling in spite of himself at the approaching arena. Edo had been lost already, but maybe it was not too late to find the others.
A/N: The continuation of this may not be what you expect. There will be other character deaths, although it certainly be Spiritshipping, as I say in the summary.