Your duel was honest. That's what I remember most.
You're a loser, you'd say. You're annoying, Yuuma, you said. You said that you needed no one, that you were fine, that you could take us or leave us. But your duel was like an outstretched hand. Underneath all those words, I thought, surely you too were lonely. I wanted to chase after you, because I kept thinking you understood. You had lost something precious to you. You, too, were afraid of being alone.
That was what I liked about you. You understood me, and I understood you, and I thought that that would be enough. I thought we'd always be together.
I just wanted to be with you, Shark. I still do.
Yuuma wanders the streets of Heartland alone. These are the streets that have created the background noise of his life. This is the pavement where he and his friends used to run, race, duel, fall — this is the place where they were born.
This is also the place they died. Yuuma walks through the silent city. He does not see anything that is there, does not hear the wind whistling through the empty streets and around the skyscrapers. He keeps looking over his shoulder, hoping to see the flutter of Kotori's ribbon or to hear the scrape of Tetsuo's skateboard. He wants nothing more than for someone to call his name.
You were really annoying.
I was never really good at school — too many long lectures with an empty stomach, too little excitement — and your voice reminded me of my old elementary school teacher, who was always frowning at me and making me stand in the hallway. I was too noisy. I was too needy. My father had just died, and I was desperate to exist again. Notice me, I kept saying. Just look at me. I'm still here.
I don't know what I thought would happen if I were all alone. I just knew that my father had always said kattobingu so loudly it echoed off the mountains, and when I yelled he was in my voice.
You listened to me. You saw me, and wanted to understand. When you said that I was interesting, Astral, I yelled at you and I'm sorry, but inside…I was really happy.
The roof is beginning to sag in Yuuma's old house, and every surface, every wall, every room holds ghosts. The screens in Akari's office are still on, a few still broadcasting, the others lighting the office with a faint blue glow. Her pen is on top of the desk, and Yuuma picks it and tries to imagine her in those final moments. Akari, the pen dropping from her fingers as the world ended around her, maybe turning towards the sound of destruction, distracted by Yuuma from her work for the last time until…
He lets the pen fall to the floor.
The kitchen is no better. A meal is half-made and molding there, one of Baa-chan's slippers lying in the middle of the floor, and Yuuma hopes she didn't fall down. He selfishly clings to the thought at least they didn't suffer, even thought he has no way of knowing, because he promised that he would live and if he thinks too hard about the cost of victory he'll break that promise as he's broken every other.
I looked up to you.
It felt like you were a million miles away from me — in age and in skill and in everything, really. You were so strong. You had the strength to protect everything and everyone you loved. And despite all that, you were still kind. Sometimes people with power aren't.
I hope your last days with your family were full of smiles, Kaito. When I made that wish, for you to live in peace, that was how I really felt — that'd you'd given everything, and now you were free.
In some parts of the city things from other worlds bled through. Yuuma finds the crystals growing out of the side of a park bench, like fungus on the bark of a tree; they glow pink and purple, and around them the plants have begun to wither. There are shapes in their formations that he can imagine if he tries, constellations of rock and light. He touches them and feels the warmth of Chaos deep within; as destructive as it can be, it reminds Yuuma of when his neighbor was pregnant and he marveled when she let him feel the baby kick.
Around some of the lights the crystals are rounder, smoother; they make glass ovals around the lights, trap them like a filament in a bulb. They are alive, Yuuma thinks, and what he is feeling is them reaching out: hello, is anyone else there?
The lights inside the crystals are taking familiar shapes if Yuuma lets himself see — is that Aquarius shining up at him? — and Yuuma sits down to watch them grow. Perhaps when they are stronger, they will speak to him. Perhaps when they are born, he will teach them to say his name.
No one is really alone
If we relive each story.