Yumi and her friends race to find Yuu in the city but what they turn up might just result in more questions than answers.
Yumi's grandmother spent the morning on the phone trying to get some answers as to where Yuu was and what her family might be able to do for her. When she wasn't being put on hold by very confused or unhelpful attendants, she was met with roadblock after roadblock and was continually told contradicting information. There was no child with her name, but there actually was and she was declared dead years ago, but there was actually a child by that name in an orphanage on the northern side of the city, but there was no orphanage at the address listed. None of it made any sense and she had no idea what to believe.
Yumi, on the other hand, decided to take a more proactive but potentially still rather unhelpful approach to the situation. Spending just enough time to get dressed, she left the house and immediately began calling her friends. She caught them up on what had happened to Yuu, pleading for help in going to find her. What she actually intended to do if they were able to locate her wasn't entirely clear. Possibly plan a breakout, but even she wasn't quite so optimistic as to the chance for success there. Still, she had to do something.
Kyoko and her friends did some looking up to the north. Kazuhiko and Hideo went to the west, Kenji tagging along out of a desire to be helpful. Suzy was doing track practice at school that day and would take that area while Ami had to skip for "cosplay" business down south, promising to do some searching once that was cleared up. That left Yumi with the eastern area.
This was, of course, an incredibly inefficient plan. Looking for one person in a city of almost a million people with a team whose members you could count on two hands was hard enough, but it was clear that whoever had taken Yuu didn't want her to be found. If there was even just one thing they overlooked, though – a single clue somewhere they could find – they didn't want to miss it over simple pessimism.
This is what Yumi told herself over and over as she frantically ran down alleyways and across the sidewalk, doing her best not to run into anyone. While a bike would be faster, that would almost certainly cause a lot more problems in terms of navigating the crowded streets. She didn't need to be running anyone else over, that was for sure.
It took almost an hour of constant running back and forth before she was forced to stop, catching her breath off to the side next to a convenience store. While her search had turned up absolutely nothing so far, the track team did seem to be a pretty realistic fallback plan if Duel Monsters didn't work out judging by her stamina. That would have been the kind of observation she'd normally make, but her mind wasn't really in the place to notice things like that at the moment.
What she did notice was a familiar face among the crowd. Not so familiar, but familiar enough that she felt there might be a chance – however small – that he might sympathize and join her cause. Approaching his surprisingly towering figure, she cleared her throat and tried to start a conversation. "Mr. Iichiro?" she said a bit hesitantly.
Seemingly surprised at being called out to like this, the man looked around in confusion before his eyes drifted to the ground. "Oh!" he exclaimed. "Hello. I didn't expect to see you again like this."
"You remember me?" Yumi asked, a small glimmer of hope seeming to appear.
"Of course," he said with a small chuckle. "Takano Yumi, correct? I remember our duel from the tournament. It was a lot of fun. You ended up as the winner, didn't you?"
"I did!" she said, nodding quickly. "I had fun in our duel, too. I'm glad we got to see each other again."
"I take it you're not usually in this part of the city, right? What brings you here today? I'm running some errands myself."
Yumi almost felt a little bad at how relieved she'd gotten to this point in their conversation so quickly. It had nothing to do with Iichiro since he seemed like a perfectly nice man, but her priority at the moment was finding Yuu. She couldn't stand around making small talk forever. "I was sort of hoping you might be able to help me with it, actually," she began.
"I can definitely try," he said with a smile.
"I'm kind of looking for a friend of mine," Yumi explained, holding out her phone with the picture she took of the two of them last night. "It's a little complicated, but she's sort of gone missing and I'm trying to find anything that might help me find her."
"That sounds serious," he said, placing a hand on his chin as he examined the photo. "I don't think I've seen anyone who looks like that, though. Sorry. Have you tried calling the police?"
"My grandma has, yeah," she told him. "I just don't want to sit around doing nothing, you know? I know there's not much I can do, but still."
He nodded. "I can tell you're concerned. I don't know if I'll be of any help, but I'll be coming back through this area around 2:00. I'll let you know if I saw anything if you come back to see me."
"That would be great," Yumi said. Considering it would be kind of weird to be giving her phone number out to adults she barely knew, this was probably the best she could do. Still, one more person looking was always a plus. "I'm going to go keep looking. Sorry for bothering you."
"It's no bother," he assured her. "Good luck at the tournament soon."
"Oh, thanks!" As she ran off, Yumi remembered the upcoming Regional and subsequently that she was meant to go to training today. Obviously, she couldn't both look for Yuu and show up there at the same time, so she made the questionable decision to cancel for the day. After walking a bit more, she ducked into an alley next to a burger restaurant, calling up her representative at CG to let them know she wouldn't be able to make it today.
Though the man on the phone was more or less unfazed by the news, she could already hear the polite but vaguely threatening scolding she'd get from Miss Fukukado the day after. She didn't regret the decision in light of that, of course, but it was still something to "look forward to" for tomorrow. It was understandable if nothing else considering there was barely over a week left before it was time to make the trip to Tokyo. Her deck could use as much fine tuning as possible now that the last of the contestants from the various prefectures won their spots.
As she pocketed her phone, her head snapped to further into the alley as the sound of footsteps approached. Considering her track record with strangers coming at her with what seemed like purpose, this immediately put Yumi on edge. Whether she had to prepare to run or, as nonsensical as it might be, duel, she'd be ready to go.
Neither of these seemed to be the appropriate response here, though. The sense of calm or perhaps simple confidence this man exuded as he walked towards her was somewhat disarming, helped along by his unnaturally slender frame and the immaculate gray suit that almost looked to be sculpted perfectly to his body. His skin was an unnatural shade of white as if someone had bleached a corpse, his short, perfectly quaffed hair looking just a touch darker than that.
He looked at – or, more accurately, through – her with a pair of nearly black eyes, two thin, blue triangle markings beneath them really helping to give the impression that something was amiss here. "Hello," he greeted, the words sounding almost artificial for some reason.
Though she hesitated for a few moments, Yumi eventually returned a, "Hi," to him.
"You've been wasting a lot of energy," he said, eyes unblinking as he continued to stare at her.
"I guess," Yumi replied, feeling a bit uncomfortable for any number of obvious reasons. "Who are you?"
For the first time since he'd approached her, the man's expression changed. His eyes narrowed as if he had to consider the answer. "I would say...Alramech," he finally told her.
"Okay. I'm Yumi." She said this mostly out of courtesy as she'd rather have this conversation over with as soon as possible.
What he said next only made things worse, though. "I know," he replied. "We've been interested in you for a bit now."
"What are you talking about?" Yumi asked, taking a step back and getting ready to run.
"It's not too important right now," Alramech told her dismissively. "What you really want to know about is the child."
Her plan to run came to a halt at this, realizing this man must have something to do with the people who showed up at her house that morning. "Are you talking about Yuu?"
"That's what they call her," he said, less to confirm it and more to express that this may have been the first time he'd learned that fact. "They said you might try to look for her when they brought her back. I decided I would deal with that."
Swallowing hard, Yumi put on the bravest face she could, raising her arm on instinct as if preparing to activate her duel disk. "What are you going to do?" she asked.
"I'm going to tell you to stop wasting your energy," he told her bluntly. "The child is our property. When this is over, you-"
"She isn't anyone's property," Yumi snapped, not waiting to hear the rest of what he said given how angry that had made her.
Almost immediately, Alramech pointed to her duel disk. "That device on your arm is your property, isn't it? That's like the child. It wouldn't be right for me to steal yours, so you can't steal ours. That makes sense, doesn't it?"
"Yuu is a person," she said, barely keeping her voice below a scream. "You can't just say you own her."
"Your government said we do," he replied to Yumi's utter disgust. "No one wanted her, so one of us had the idea to take her and use her for our cause. We intended for her to be just the first, but the long time investment and her performing below expectations ultimately meant we abandoned it. Still, we can't really afford to be too picky, so we keep what we already have."
At a true and utter loss for words, Yumi tried desperately to process what he was saying. Was it just the city government? The prefecture? The whole country? How far did this go? More importantly, what were they trying to accomplish by abusing Yuu and forcing her to duel like that? The more he spoke, the more confusing this all became.
"Who...who are you?" she finally asked.
"I told you before that I go by Alramech here," he replied, unsure of why she needed it repeated.
"But who are you?" she asked again. "What...who are you? Who are the people you keep talking about?" After a second's pause, she then asked, "Why can't you just leave Yuu alone?" her voice almost cracking as she did.
"Oh, that makes more sense. I can see why you might be confused about that." Though she didn't fully notice it, this was the first time Alramech had actually closed his eyes during their entire conversation. He did so to nod his head slowly, seeming to acknowledge what she was saying and maybe even to consider his response, though it was hard to tell what he was actually doing.
Opening his eyes with one last nod, he gave the comprehensive response of, "Well, it's a lot of things you don't really need to know about yet. We'll be seeing you soon so long as you continue to perform above expectations. Keep doing that and you'll have your answers." With a small nod and an artificial smile, he turned to leave.
"Wait! Stop!" Yumi tried fruitlessly to get him to listen, pleading with him to explain anything about the situation. As a last resort, she finally did activate her duel disk. "If you won't talk, then duel me for the answers! That's why you know about me, right? Give me...some test, or chance or something!"
This actually managed to make him stop, though it would prove just as pointless as anything else she'd done up until now. Looking over his shoulder, Alramech simply replied, "I decline." As far as Yumi knew, no one had actually done this before. By the time she recovered from the stupor it left her in, Alramech had rounded a corner and somewhat predictably vanished.
Though Alramech had been the one to run from the challenge, Yumi went home feeling utterly defeated. She didn't have the patience to see Iichiro again, something she felt a bit scummy about considering she'd roped him into helping her despite the fact he had no stake in anything going on.
She texted her friends that the search was a bust and that there wasn't anything they could do. This was, understandably, met with some resistance. They'd spent all morning trying their best to find Yuu across the city and wanted an answer as to why they were supposed to ignore her plight or Yumi's earlier conviction in finding her.
As Yumi made her way home, she slowly formulated a text filled with falsehoods, writing bits and pieces as she walked and thoughts came to her. She hated lying but rationalized it as protecting them. After all, she didn't know anything about Alramech or the people who took Yuu. What if getting involved any further would put her friends in the crosshairs? She didn't want to involve them into anything like that.
Seconds before pressing the send button, though, she hesitated. For the first time in a while, she realized how much of a hypocrite she was being. With all the talk of how much she would support her friends and the effort she expended trying to find Yuu, she was still refusing to let them help her in return. She kept telling them and herself she would stop omitting things like this, yet that's exactly what she was about to do.
Erasing everything she'd previously typed out, she took a seat on the cracked country road leading out of the city and towards her home, composing a new message entirely and refusing to budge until she was finished. She explained how Alramech had come to find her seemingly out of nowhere and his vague half-answers to her questions. She told them how all of this gave the impression that there was absolutely no way for them to find Yuu unless he or whoever he was associated with wanted them to. She also said how afraid she was that she'd accidentally dragged all of them into something much bigger than they could have expected.
Yumi couldn't tell whether she should have been surprised at how they responded or expected it from the start. Almost unanimously, her friends defiantly voiced their support of her and refuted the idea that she'd endangered them for the act of caring about someone else. If anything, they began to suggest or discuss ways to get even more involved, not wanting to simply give up and leave Yuu in these people's clutches.
"That guy said he knew who I was and I think it's because I beat Yuu at the tournament," Yumi said to them. "I think our best option right now is for me to keep winning. I know it's not much, but it's all I can really think of right now."
"I guess there's not much else to do," Kazuhiko relented. "Feels like crap, but when we don't even know who we're actually fighting, that's the best we've got so far."
"I'm sorry there's not more we can do," Ami messaged. "It's not right that you have to carry all of this alone."
"Knew I should have convinced my mom to let me go out of town to win the last tournament," Kazuhiko said, referencing the fourth quarter Prefectural Tournament held elsewhere in Chiba during November.
"You're all helping more than you even need to," Yumi told them. "I wouldn't be where I am if I didn't have your support. I'm not alone as long as I still have that."
"We'll keep doing whatever we can for you," Kyoko said.
"There's no doubt we'll win in the end," Hideo added. "We'll bide our time and wait for the opening we need."
"That makes it sound a lot more exciting than it is," Suzy told them. "Still, we're not going to let them do whatever they want. We'll figure something out eventually."
As she made her way back to her house, Yumi couldn't help but smile. The realization that, just as they'd told her yesterday, she really could trust her friends and that that trust wouldn't burden them was freeing. Her life had gotten so strange since last summer and she hardly knew what anything meant anymore, but one thing she knew she could count on were the people she cared for.
Stepping inside, she went to see her grandmother who was sat on the couch flipping through a phone book. "I'm back," she said, taking a seat next to her and laying back as far as she could.
"Where did you head off to before?" she asked, realizing that her granddaughter had never actually mentioned what she'd gone to do when leaving the house.
"I wanted to try and find Yuu, but I didn't get any leads," she answered truthfully. "I don't know where they took her."
"Neither do I," she said, patting her on the shoulder. "I'm sorry this is happening. I wish I knew what to do here, but I'm really at a loss." Though she kept her voice measured to avoid upsetting Yumi or making things seem entirely hopeless, what she was feeling on the matter was something else entirely. In truth, she was terrified. A child was taken from her home by some mysterious people who she couldn't get a straight answer from. No one seemed to know anything about them and almost seemed to be making it harder for her to learn anything of value. She had to be strong and keep herself collected, but she couldn't help but compare it, even just in broad strokes, to when Yumi's parents disappeared.
"Do you want me to make you anything to eat?" she asked, hoping to change the subject and give the both of them something else to focus on besides their helplessness.
Yumi shook her head. "I'm kind of tired. I might go take a nap for a little bit, actually."
Giving her a hug, her grandmother said, "I'll try to think of someone else to call while you do. I know we'll find her eventually. It's going to work out." She'd said this to herself a few times over the course of the morning, holding out hope that maybe if she could get Yumi to believe it now then she might be able to, as well.
Heading to her room, Yumi flopped onto her futon, the stress of the morning and her lack of sleep finally setting in as the adrenaline wore off. Looking to the side, she saw the empty space next to her that Yuu had occupied the night before, thinking back to how alien this simple piece of furniture seemed to be for her.
Without any kind of warning, she began to breathe heavily, pressing her face into her pillow and screaming as loudly as she could and kicking her feet in the air. It took all her strength to keep her voice muffled like this as the rest of her body contorted and fought against the jumble of painful emotions and impulses that hit her all at once.
She carried on like this for a solid fifteen minutes before finally tiring herself out. Feeling like she'd been emptied out and scraped clean, she didn't have the strength to stay conscious any longer. Sleeping for ten hours with her face still planted into her tear-stained pillow, she dreamed of nothing and awoke feeling somehow worse. Earlier optimism aside, there was no denying this was a bad situation with no clear way out.
Strangely enough, this almost made her feel like she was a bit closer to understanding Yuu.
The hole just gets deeper and deeper. You'd think it belonged to some YouTuber who did something bad at this point.
It probably wouldn't be a bad idea to go to the media with what they have, but I don't see that working out too well. Your options are severely limited when your enemy can probably make you disappear without much of a fuss. Especially when the sum total of your proof is one digital photo and one tournament record. Not many options right now.
Yumi's finally learning a lesson about keeping things from other people for the sake of protecting them; namely, that it's bad. I doubt any of them fully grasp the scope of what they're going up against, but it's still nice to see how ready her friends are to fight with her. Most of them have never even spoken to Yuu and are doing it purely out of loyalty to Yumi. Inspiring.
Alramech is kind of familiar. Wonder if he's related to someone else. Besides Saiou, I mean, considering they're now the only two people in history to ever flat out decline a duel. Scary.
What new suffering will befall these children next? I know and you might find out and get angry if you keep reading. Nothing else here for now, though. Thanks for reading. Share if you're enjoying. Always remember that card games...don't solve all your problems?