Chapter 3

I couldn't take the smile off my face as I proceeded to my office. Giving my wife that wonderful smile this morning really started my day right. I sat on my chair and stared at a photo of Asuka on my desk. She looked so cheerful, so beautiful.

Our 25th Anniversary was coming up, and I wanted to do something special. I needed to jumpstart our relationship, so I have to do something grand. And I thought a romantic getaway would do the trick. I searched the internet for various destinations and resolved that I would take Asuka to New Zealand. I researched on the place, and looked through the different tours and sites we can see there. And I searched for hotels. I wrote down everything I knew my wife would love, and wrote down its precise beside it. After calculating the expenses, my eyes widened. It would take me a lot of overtimes at the Leagues to earn that much money. I would need to be more efficient and hard working to get a raise, which from the looks of it, I was going to need. But it was worth it, for Asuka. I had my plan set.

I decided it was best that I focus on my schedule for today. My manager came in my office without knocking.

"Good morning, Daichi," I said, "I was just about to ask for you."

"Mr. Phoenix, there's a lot of meetings you need to attend to today," Daichi said. "Your first meeting is at twelve in the afternoon. So, in the meantime, I suggest that you prepare for the upcoming Pro League tournament this Saturday," He placed the stack of folders he had been holding at my desk.

"Here are the profiles of every duelist competing in the tournament."

The Pros were demanding for one reason. Ranks. If you won, your rank would increase by one. But if you lost, your rank would decrease by five places, and you had to work your way back up again. It was tough to maintain the rank I had with the way the system worked, so I had to work extra hard. President Takahashi was the head of the Leagues, and he was strict as a nun. He wanted perfection, and he would despise you if you were anything less. I had to be on his good side if I wanted that raise for the trip.

In Pro dueling, the competitors have a choice to research on their opponents before the tournament began. Most of the top duelists did this, in order to gain the upper hand at dueling. Knowing what you were up against would allow you to prepare your deck for whatever your opponents had in store for you. In pro dueling, side decks were necessary to build, if you wanted to be at the top.

In my opinion, this was the worst part of being a Pro duelist. The research on creating the Side Deck. I sighed. "I'll work on it, Daichi," I said, taking the folder on the very top. I started reading over the duelist's basic information, his current record, and the list of cards in the deck he registered. I missed the time when the League allowed a duelist to change their entire deck in the middle of a tournament. This allowed duelists to be more versatile and unpredictable. Also, the research that had to be done wasn't really that tedious. Now, however, the League stuck with a registered deck, with an unknown Side Deck of fifteen cards.

I switched on my laptop and opened up my deck list. Then I pulled out my notebook from my drawer and opened it to a clean page. I wrote down the duelist's name on top of the page, as well as the name of the deck he was using. I began writing down all the cards the duelist had that posed a threat to my deck, and wrote beside it the cards that I had that wasn't in my current deck list, but would nullify the weakness.

By the time it was eleven forty, I had finished going over two profiles. I stared at the stack, and grumbled at the sight of seventeen more folders stacked on top of each other. I stood up and stretched, before I proceeded to Daichi's office.

"Daichi," I said, "It's almost time for my first meeting."

Daichi glanced at the wall clock and nodded. "Right. I've already set up our ride, Mr. Phoenix. We have a meeting with Mr. Kaiba at the KaibaCorp. We better get going."

As it turned out, Kaiba wanted to discuss with me the opportunity to be featured in one of the many commercials they were planning to make for the upcoming tournament. He had discussed with me the details. It involved a lot of overtime and a lot of practice. Needless to say, I accepted the opportunity. After that meeting, Daichi told me that I was needed at the Gachi Recruitment Company. And after that, at Industrial Illusions. And after that, a representative from the North Academy wanted to speak with me.

The Gachi Recruitment Company asked me to attend their recruitment days at Domino city and prepare a speech for the aspiring duelists out there. Industrial Illusions asked me if it was alright that they reprinted my deck as part of their promotional collector's edition set. The collector's edition decks were a series of Pro League duelists' decks, with the pro's signature at the back of each card. However, it wasn't allowed to be played in tournaments, in order to avoid cookie cutting*. It was really only created for collecting purposes. I found it pretty cool that I was selected as one of the duelists they planned to use in the collector's edition decks. When I agreed to it, they provided me paperwork to fill out, for legal purposes according to them, scheduled to be given back to them by tomorrow. Finally, North Academy asked me to be featured in their dueling tutorial video.

I dealt with all the meetings coolly, handling them one by one so as not to overwhelm myself with the amount of work they wanted me to do. Even if I had the choice to decline their offers, it was to my best interest, according to Daichi, to accept all of them. It was a tactic of Daichi's to keep me at the top of my career. And for the past seven years, it's been that way, so I need not question his decisions for me.

By the time all the meetings were done, it was already eight at night. I was drained and I wanted to go home, but I knew I needed to work on those duelist profiles. Even if the Leagues allowed us the information of our opponents, we were not allowed to take it outside the building, to avoid the risk of non-Pro League players to obtain the vital information of the Pro duelists. I sat on my desk and dilligently worked on my Side Deck based on the profiles. One by one, I labeled each card that posed a threat to me, and one by one I tried to figure out what was the best card that would nullify the weakness. This was easier said than done. After going through nineteen different deck lists, my head started to spin. It was impossible for anyone to extract all the threat cards from 19 different decks and then come up with 15 cards that would suffice to beat those very weaknesses. But I pushed through. I wanted to finish it up, so that my day tomorrow would clear up.

By the time I finished my final profile, it was already twelve o'clock midnight.

I need to work even harder, if I wanted that trip. I wouldn't fail Asuka this time.

*cookie cutting: the act in which duelists create a carbon copy a famous duelist's deck for them to use.