O hi dead fanbase!
I started typing up the new chapter, and I started writing the wrong chapter. So I copied the part that goes in this chapter here and started over again. I'll keep parts of it for next chapter, but if it no longer fits, it no longer fits.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! IT WORKS! IT WORKS!
After that incident, life went on as normal. For awhile, at least. Activities began picking up, and Amaya and I found ourselves really busy. We worked hard in the morning so we could work hard in the afternoon so we could sleep in the evening so we could work hard the next morning until we found ourselves sleeping in class once in awhile. This was all normal. We were busy, and soon began to forget about our other problems.
Until the second half of the year started.
It began simply at first. Amaya had been taking a half year course for the first half of the year, and I assumed he now had an extra study hall, which made me slightly envious.
But boy, was I wrong.
How could I have thought that? I had known Amaya for years, and I should've known better. Amaya hates study halls. Sure, he hates regular classes too, but at least in regular classes something was usually going on. In study halls, everyone was quiet. No one said a word. Nothing but work. Amaya hated silence as much as I enjoyed it. He'd take anything to get out of a study hall.
But that's a story for later on. Before the story goes any farther, it needs to take a pit stop on a study hall.
Oh, I KNOW what you're thinking. Another pointless attempt at character development and another failed attempt to try to interest you? No.
No matter how much he tries, Amaya ALWAYS has one study hall every six days of school. This is due to Science Lab being only twice every six days. So on this one day Amaya has study hall, and I have the misfortune of having a study hall at the same time and day as him. To keep him from complaining all the time, I agreed to sign up to go to the library with him on this study hall so that he could go to a place he could talk with someone to talk to.*
It was on one of these days that I walked into the library for study hall, as I usually did. I didn't suspect anything unusual about this day, and for days afterward I didn't think this day had any impact on recent events. But I should have known better.
And then everyone died.
Just kidding, let's move on.
So I walked into the study hall and spotted Amaya sitting at a table in the back. As I always did, I walked over to this table and I sat down, ready to have another pointless conversation.
"Hey, Leiko! Look what I've got!" Amaya told me as he showed me something surrounded with some very colorful plastic.
"Colorful plastic?" I guessed.
"Nope!"
Pointless...conversation...ummm...
...What?
Amaya opened the colorful...thing and pulled out some trading cards. "Trading cards!"
"Trading cards?" I asked as I stared at the trading cards. They looked interesting, I gave them that. But what was so special about them?
"Yup! You're good at guessing!" I decided to ignore that burst of stupidity. "It's for this game called Yu-Gi-Oh!"
"What the heck does that mean?" I demanded. Man, sometimes I hate Japan and it's different language.
The same thing can be said for my opinion on France. I will tell you that Japan's language annoys me.
Amaya shrugged. "Probably nothing important. Something to do with games. Look at these cards I have!"
Amaya then showed me the cards he'd found inside the colorful plastic that I later learned was called a 'booster pack'. He had cards called "Hane-Hane", "Man-Eater Bug", "Change of Heart", "Fearful Earthbound", "Headless Knight", "Necro Jar", and "Gernia".**
This was one of the stupidest things I'd ever heard of at the time.
"This card game," I began, "is one of the stupidest things I've ever heard of."
"This card game is awesome," Amaya countered.
"This card game is for children!" I retorted.
"If there's a card called Headless Knight, how child-friendly is this game?" Amaya asked me.
"Point taken," I muttered.
"Don't fret," Amaya told me. "I got you some cards too!" He handed me another one of these so-called booster packs.
Oh joy.
I opened the thing and inside I found seven cards, just like Amaya had. The cards I had, however, were "Pot of Greed", "Mammoth Graveyard", "Magic Cylinder", "Queen's Knight", "4-starred Ladybug of Doom", "Mystical Elf", and "Sangan".**
I had to laugh.
"Four..." I spoke inbetween laughs. "...Starred...Ladybug..." Here was a really long pause while I kept laughing. "...Of...DOOM? That is the most HILARIOUS thing I've EVER heard of!"
"Shhhh!" The librarian shushed me.
I managed to stop laughing. "Seriously. Ladybugs and doom don't go in the same sentence without the word 'not' somewhere in there.
Amaya poined at a ladybug crawling on the table. "I'm not sure, but I bet this ladybug has some sort of intention to bring doom to us all."
"Shut it," I told him.
"Come on, Leiko," Amaya said to me. "At least give this game a chance."
"A chance at what? Failure?"
"A chance to grow on you. This is a great game if you let it."
"Oh, fine. I'll try. But don't expect anything-"
"Yay!"
"...to change," I finished.
*Ironic much? At my school, you can't talk in regular study hall without permission, but in the library, if you're not in the study area, you can talk as much as you want.
**Want to try to figure out something odd in the end? Research into who has most of these cards!
How's THAT for not-so-filler? I edited some of what I'd written to make the change easier. Now I hope you're happy. This was a fun chapter to write, but a LOT of research was put into it.
