It was Judai's job to train new employees. He was the employee that has so far worked there the longest, and and even Atem and Yugi can barely remember a time without him. When Judai asks what they did without him, Yugi says that 'his memory is fuzzy' for that period of his life and Atem just gives him one of those terrifying smiles that Judai has learned to associate with arson and high stake games of go fish. So anyway Judai has trained everyone that has ever worked at their little restaurant except Yusei, who was hired too soon after Judai was and thus rendering him unable to be any authority on this waiter thing, and Yuma, because he was sick the week Yuma started.
Okay, so that meant the only person he actually trained was Yuya, but that's not the point. He technically trained Yuya four times and that's like, nearly the same amount of Troubled People that Yugi and Atem have hired to work in their weirdly placed restaurant in the weirder part of the city. So that has to count for something.
Judai shows up right on time for Yusaku's first day, a Saturday morning, and finds the new recruit already there, standing behind a potted plant, staring at Yuma who's fast asleep at one of the tables. Watching your coworkers sleep is kind of weird, but not exactly Yusaku's fault, because Yuma is being a loud sleeper. Yuma keeps mumbling about his grandmother's food and his bossy sister, and then screams 'you can't tell me how to live my life Astral!' so loud that Yuma ends up waking himself up.
"Ugh," Yuma yawns, and then checks his watch, his face morphing into pure terror. "CRAP I'M LATE. ATEM IS GOING TO KILL ME."
"Yuma," Yusei says, walking in at this time and greeting Judai with a quick nod. "You're already at work."
"Oh," Yuma blinks, then breaks out into a large grin. "Ha! I'm not late! ...How did I get here?"
Yusaku edges farther behind the potted plant.
"Hey! Yusaku, right?" Judai says, not letting him hide on the first day. "I'm Judai Yuki, and I'll be in charge of your training."
"Nice to meet you," Yusaku says, polite but flat. He moves out into the open with all the eagerness of a dying snail.
Well, that was something they'd have to work on later.
"Atem has you on support staff right?" Judai asks, and Yusaku nods. "Cool, so that means you get to play host, keep an eye on the salad bar, wash the napkins, and fold up the silverware. Once you get used to that we'll have you help out cleaning tables and doing waiter things, at least for the cafe."
"I understand," Yusaku says.
So serious. A second Yusei? Yusei's long lost cotton-candy haired, green eyed younger brother? Or maybe an evil doppleganger? Judai stares a little longer at Yusaku, trying to see if there's any trace of a Yusei 2.0 in his face, and Yusaku stares back, until it starts to become uncomfortable for the both of them.
"Eh, it doesn't matter." Judai decides, leading Yusaku to the kitchen. "Robot impersonator or not, we have work to do. Training, start!"
"...What?"
Yusaku is pretty good at nearly everything Judai throws at him, which is pretty cool. Admittedly working as support staff was fairly easy, it was just mostly a lot of time management and quickness that made the job tricky, since you had to go to the laundry machine in the backroom to wash the napkins and then go out and clean up the ice in the salad bar and then seat a couple people and then go switch the napkins to the dryer and use the already clean ones to fold along with the newly washed silverware and then bring out some plates to the salad bar and -
"I understand the process," Yusaku says, and apparently Judai had been talking out loud while they refilled the olives.
"But don't worry about being overwhelmed!" Judai continues anyway, undeterred. "All of us are here to help you out if you need anything, you know? You've got Yuya and Yuma, and they're great at this support thing, and also Yusei, who is also great, and me, I'm pretty great and-"
"Aren't you a waiter?" Yusaku asks, and that's probably the first question Judai has heard from him all morning. "And I thought Yusei was your repairman."
"Well, yeah," Judai says. "I mostly wait tables, but I can cook when we get busy and I help out with support stuff when I've got the time. And Yusei is the mechanic, but he's also a waiter, cook, and whatever he wants to be. Look, see?"
They turn, just in time to see Yusei emerging from the kitchen with two plates in hand. His apron looks like it's been badly burned recently and something smells faintly of fire.
"Is that a…" Yusaku squints. "Is that a buzzsaw on his belt?"
Judai looks, and yeah! There is! Yusei's wearing a toolbelt under his work apron, with a small buzzsaw just barely visible beneath it. He hadn't noticed because the the burn marks on Yusei's apron coincidentally seem shaped like E-Hero! Burst Lady, from his favorite childhood TV show, so he got distracted.
Yusei comes over after depositing the plates to a nearby table, perhaps because of their blatant staring, or because Judai wasn't paying attention and has now poured an entire liter of olives into the dish, which has overflowed and formed it's own miniature mountain on the ice.
"Judai," Yusei says, and his eyes flicker to the new topographical formation in their salad bar.
"I know, I know," Judai plucks a carrot from one of the other dishes and sticks it on the top of Mt. Olive, since he's already in this mess and may as well momentarily benefit from it. "Don't worry. Yusaku will clean it up."
Yusaku bears this indignity with a brave face. Calm face? Neutral face. It's the same face he's been wearing all morning, so Judai's not sure what to call it. He was joking about making Yusaku fix it, but since Yusaku didn't say anything in response Judai's joke is now like his school history; stretching on a bit longer than anyone expected and it lost it's punchline somewhere down the road.
"That's not important right now," Yusei says, and Judai sticks a carrot in Yusei's mouth. "I need Yusaku to go find Yugi."
"Why, what's up?" Judai asks.
There is a distinct boom that resounds from the kitchen, blowing the door open and letting out a column of smoke, smacking into Yuma who had been standing nearby to clean up a spilled drink, and when it pulled back it revealed Yuma sprawled out on the ground, eyes spinning like roulette wheels. Mt. Olive topples over as the salad bar shakes from the aftershocks, and Judai watches as a couple of the paintings fall off the wall.
"That." Yusei says, chewing on the carrot with a thoughtful look on his face. "I'm having some issues in the kitchen."
"What kind of issues?" Yusaku asks, catching a statue of a colorful, dancing hippo before it hits the ground. His face hasn't quite changed from Yusaku's Eternal Resting Neutral Face, but there's a slight pinch to it now and Judai is going to congratulate Yusei later on successfully inciting some emotion from the kid, even if it's just mild panic. "What's broken?"
"Everything, mostly," Yusei sighs. "I've been trying to fix things while also cooking, but I'm afraid I can no longer do both."
There is a sound akin to a metal avalanche crashing into the floor and Yusei winces.
"Who's in there?" Judai asks while picking up the portrait of Yugi's grandfather that has fallen over. Grandpa Mutou looks vaguely amused at them all.
"No one, it's just been me all morning," Yusei says, as there's another loud explosion. "Sorry to interrupt your training, Yusaku, but please tell Yugi that we're going to have to temporarily close for a bit. Judai, run damage control for me. I have to go."
And with that, Yusei pulls the buzzsaw out of his belt and returns to the kitchen, framed by a halo of smoke.
"Yuma, you still alive?" Judai calls out.
Yuma sends him a thumbs up from his place on the floor. Good enough.
Judai vaults onto one of the tables and from there climbs to the top of one of the booths.
"Hi everyone," Judai says, using his naturally loud and immediately pulling in the focus of all their current customers. Johan once told him that he was a 'living megaphone' and Judai decides now is a great time to tap into that skill. "Sorry for the inconvenience, but we are experiencing technical difficulties of the food making sort. So uh. In a neat and orderly fashion, please get out. Oh but feel free to take your food with you, you can take the plates it's fine."
Then, the sprinklers go off.
How can a kitchen explode multiple times?
Yusaku stalks down the hall that extends from the 'Employees Only' door behind the registers counter. After Yusei returned to the kitchen and Judai jumped on some the tables and told everyone to leave, there was a minimal amount of panic or surprise, with the slightly soggy patrons scooping up their food and then exiting. The only one who seemed at all bothered about it was a customer that happened to be Judai's friend, a black haired goth(?) that was more upset that Judai accidentally kicked his plate onto the floor more than the fact that their kitchen was in danger of going nuclear.
"I already said I was sorry!" Judai shouts, back in the restaurant of insanity. "Manjoume, c'mon! I'll buy you a new dish later!"
"Why does this kind of thing always happen when I'm around you?" His friend yells back. "Plus, now my jacket is soaked and I have to walk back home in this, Judai!"
"Why is that a problem? You never wash that thing anyway, this is probably good for it."
The following noise, reminiscent of what drop kicking a watermelon into a marble table might sound like, did not come from the kitchen.
Yusaku isn't sure where Yugi is, but he thinks, logically, his office would be a good place to start.
"So the fish casserole dish isn't really selling well," Yugi's voice comes through the door. Score one point for logic. "I think we should probably take it off the menu."
"It'd be doing much better if Judai didn't keep telling people that it's some sort of 'calamari massacre drenched in salad dressing'," Atem's surly voice. Yusaku pushes the door open, not bothering to knock because what good was manners where your kitchen is about to go boom. "And it doesn't help that Yusei refuses to endorse it just because he doesn't like seafood."
"I know that but - oh, Yusaku?" Yugi looks up from his desk. Atem is standing next to him, arms crossed and looking very unperturbed by the shaking of their office walls.
"The kitchen is on fire and is currently experiencing multiple explosions," Yusaku says. "Yusei says that we have to close early today so that he can focus on fixing it. Judai has evacuated all the customers."
"So that's what's rumbling," Atem mutters.
"Thank you for telling me, Yusaku," Yugi says, wearing the kind of expression Yusaku might expect from someone who just got a ticket for going a couple miles over the speed limit to have, not someone who was just informed that their kitchen was on fire. Yugi looks at a paper with the words BUDGET FOR THIS MONTH written cleanly across it. He crumples it up and throws it into a wastebasket that looked to be overflowing with papers. Papers that also had the word BUDGET written on them.
"Should we be calling the police?" Yusaku asks, because that seems like something people normally do, while Yugi gently places his head on his desk and does not lift it again.
"No," Atem says. "It'll be fine."
Another explosion shakes the office.
"...all I'm saying is, if I was a secret agent, I'd be an explosives expert," Judai says, just as Yusaku steps out from the back door and into the back lot the other employees have congregated in. "I'd be like, the best infiltrator. I'd get in and then boom! Explosions."
"I don't see how using explosives would help you with infiltration," Yusei says, covered in what looks like soot and possibly a burnt salad. A completely soaked Judai seems to be in the process of picking crispy lettuce off him. The kitchen has stopped attempting to level the building with shaking and fire, so it seems Yusei was successful in stopping whatever was causing all the problems. Somehow.
"Well, what else would I use?" Judai says. "I'm not much of a sword guy."
"That's not what I meant."
Yusaku steers himself away from this conversation. He means to hover somewhere within earshot because Atem ordered them all to remain nearby while he and Yugi surveyed the mess, but out of the way enough that none of his coworkers will bother him. This plan is shot before he evens makes it a few steps - Yuya spots him and beckons him over to where he and Yuma were.
"Hey, Yusaku, you're taller than me by like an inch right?" Yusaku was several inches taller, actually. Yuya drops an empty tomato can into his hands. "Put this on top of The Tower will you?"
The Tower was a stack of empty vegetable cans Yuma and Yuya must've nicked from the kitchen and it stacked up higher than they were tall. With a bit of stretching and effort, he's able to balance the can at the very top without collectively knocking everything over. Was this what teenagers normally did for fun when they had nothing to do and no dark secret organizations to pursue? Yusaku could not ascertain its purpose other than as a way to see how high a structure could be before collasping under its own weight.
"Alright, thanks!" Yuya says, and then takes a couple steps back. "Okay, Yuma!"
"Yeah!" Yuma shouts, pumping an arm into the air. "Kattobingu!"
"What are you doing?" Yusaku asks.
"I'm going to go over there," Yuma points back several feet. "Then, take a running jump and clear this entire tower of cans."
"That's impossible," Yusaku says, wondering if insanity is contagious.
"Kattobingu," Yuma tells him, which isn't a real word so Yusaku has no idea what he's saying. "These kind of things get me fired up!"
"To do what?" Yusaku asks, but it doesn't matter because Yuma is too busy doing that running leap that isn't nearly high enough, so it sends him crashing through the cans at the halfway height and bouncing off the ground like he's ball made of rubber with an indignant shriek.
"Good effort, Yuma," Yuya says cheerily, as Yuma eventually rolls to a stop. "I think you got higher than usual today?"
"Next time," Yuma swears from his position on the ground, amid a sea of corn and bean cans. "I'll get it next time for sure."
"He said that last time," Yuya says, smiling but not in an unkind way. "Yuma never does anything halfway. You really have to admire his never give up adittude."
Yusaku doesn't know what to say to that. But as he turns and looks at Yuma, now surrounded by Yusei and Judai who came over after watching Yuma's graceful landing, who's smiling and laughing like he didn't just nearly break his face on the concrete, Yusaku supposes he can't fault someone for having such a blindingly bright reason for living. After all, Yusaku has three of his own, but none of them are particularly happy ones.
Yuma gets up, after he's had Yusei put a bandaid on his forehead from where his head had made a spectacular collision with the ground, and then did a series of backflips to get back to Yuya and Yusaku. He executes each one with precision and speed and Yusaku wonders how Yuma has such incredible gymnastic ability when Yuma accidentally slips on an empty can and nearly careens into both Yuya and Yusaku, stopped only by Judai and Yusei grabbing both his arms at the last second.
Yusaku tries to remember what the employment contract said about the insurance policy here. It's only been one day and he's nearly seen his life flash before his eyes twice, which didn't really amount to much when he was missing like over half his memories but the principal of the matter remained. He wasn't sure this job was helping him maintain a low profile or helping him 'socialise'.
"You know," Yuya says, startling Yusaku out of his thoughts. "Maybe our kitchen nearly blowing up on your first day hasn't left the best impression, but we're really happy to have you here, Yusaku. You're really good at keeping a calm."
"...Thanks," Yusaku says eventually, when he realizes that Yuya is staring at him because he's waiting for an answer. He tries to give a small smile, because it was a compliment and Yusaku doesn't really hear many of those. Even if all his coworkers seem insane, they're… sincere? Judai is more dense than carbon fiber, Yusei is faithfully oblivious to near the supernatural levels of weirdness that goes on, Yuma is frequently yelling and running headfirst into physical harm, Yuya is either constantly smiling or looking like he's about to erupt like a volcano made of pure stress, and Yusaku doesn't even know where to begin with Atem and Yugi, but there's no denying they all seem to care a lot for each other. And if that wasn't the textbook definition of friendship, Yusaku wasn't sure what was.
"We're going to have to work on your smile," Yuya laughs. "Didn't Judai tell you? When working in customer service - you have to smile until it hurts."
"...Oh." That would take some practice.
That would take a lot of practice.
"Yuya!"
Yusaku turns and looks - one of the clones from the other day is running to them from across the street. This one had been locked in the freezer, if Yusaku remembers right, the one with purple hair styled in spikes that looked like they could probably stab a man if angled right. The clone runs up to Yuya, out of breath and looking deadly serious.
"Yuto?" Yuya looks surprised, while Judai squints at him very hard from over Yuya's head. "What are you doing here?"
"The first doppleganger," Judai whispers, because of course, Yusaku should have expected nothing less after his strange mumblings this morning about being a robot duplicate of Yusei. Which was ridiculous, because no program could copy the mind and actions of a human so well. AI's didn't have free will. Ignis was a strange case, but no exception, just an example of what happens when you let someone code pure annoyance into an algorithm.
"Yuya," Yuto catches his breath and puts a hand on his twins(?) shoulder, looking vaguely sick. "I just got word from Yugo. Zarc is coming home."
All the color drains from Yuya's face.
"Zarc?" Yuya's voice is three octaves higher than normal. "Big bro Zarc is coming home now?"
"Yeah," Yuto looks just as pale as Yuya. "Yuri got word of it from Mom, and he told Yugo, who's been trying to call you for over an hour."
"Phone's inside," Yuya says, staring off into the distance like he's already envisioning his doom. "Kitchen blew up. Forgot about it."
"We don't have much time," Yuto says. "He's going to be back today."
"What was our emergency plan, again?"
"We never made one." Yuto intones flatly.
"Ah," Yuya says, and turns to Yusaku with a very, very strange smile. "Well. It was nice getting to know you, Yusaku."
Yusaku just nods like he understands what's going on.
"Yuma, you'll be at my funeral right?"
"Uh," Yuma says. "Sure?"
"Yusei, Judai," Yuya continues. "Tell Atem that I want an Egyptian styled funeral. A gold sarcophagus, ankhs and the hieroglyphs and everything Atem goes on about when he gives he gets mad at us for breaking stuff."
"You want to be mummified?" Yusei asks.
"Right on," Judai nods approvingly. "Mummy stuff is literally last century, but Atem would definitely think that's way cooler than a regular old burial or cremation. He'd probably even give you a speech in Egyptian. If he, you know, actually knows any. Are we sure he isn't just some Egyptian weeaboo?"
"One time I saw him try to curse the cash register when it wasn't working," Yuma says. "I couldn't understand what he was saying, buuut it might have been Egyptian? But it was late and I may have also been convinced that I had snapped and started seeing spirits and had entered an alternate dimension that was a strange cloudy purple place kind of like hell? So I dunno."
"He has been to Egypt at least," Yusei says, crossing his arms and looking thoughtful. "He brought back that stone tablet a few years back, remember? The one with the pharaoh and his priest, fighting against each other with a magician and a dragon."
"Tablet...? Oh! That giant rock we hang in the bathroom," Judai snaps his fingers. "He likes to make fun of the priest because it looks like Seto Kaiba. Yuya, I bet if you ask he'd bury it with you."
"Oh, that's nice," Yuya says, looking the very opposite of his words.
"If you have time to be dramatic," Yuto says, exasperation dripping from every word. "Then you have time to help me think up that emergency plan we never got around to."
"My current plan is dying, Yuto."
"We're not dying, Yuya."
"To die, to sleep, no more-" Yuya says, sweeping his arms apart like the world was his stage, facing the sky like it was his audience. "And by a sleep to say we end, the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to."
"Theater kids," Yuto seethes, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Why couldn't you be the engineering twin that just cries when he's scared, not the one who defaults to Hamlet when stressed?
"Ughh, why don't you just stay over at the Kurosaki household?" Yuya says, still posed like he's begging the sky for divine help. "I'm sure Ruri would be happy to hide you in her bed."
Yuto blinks.
Then Yuto's face flames a bright shade of red and Yuya takes a moment to backtrack and mentally revisit his words and then chokes on air.
"I MEANT UNDER THE BED," Yuya screeches. "NOT IN IT."
The two of them devolve into a fit of stressful babbling, Yuto covering his face to hide the blush as he goes on about Ruri and I aren't doing - that, yet - I MEAN UH we haven't - SHUN WOULD KILL ME and Yuya covering his face to claw out the image as he goes on about buddy pal arguably favorite twin please for the love of god shut up I don't want to know any more, and Yusaku is so thoroughly lost that he's rounded back to some semblance of sense.
"So you just need to avoid your brother?" Yusaku asks, and Yuya looks at him like he's a messenger sent straight from God himself.
"We need to avoid him for a week," Yuto says, still hiding his face. "Because he is literally the devil incarnate and I wouldn't even wish him on Yuri. All four of us have to split and be in places he's not going to find and that's our big emergency plan because I thought he wasn't going to be due back until fall break so I don't have anything better than 'run and hide like frightened school children'."
"Yeah," Yuya says, panic returning to him. "And it's going to be easy for you to hide, because your bracelet buddy partner is in town! And Yugo could probably live in Rin's basement forever if he asked and he you know she'll be his first choice! But Serena would sooner dump Yuri in a ditch than let him into her house and Yuzu is visiting colleges with her father!"
"That would solve Yuri's problems then, wouldn't it?" Yuto says, finally forcing his blush down and removing his hands so he can cross his arms. "Serena can leave him in a landfill and we can find him later."
"Yuto…" Yuya sighs.
"I know, I know." Yuto grimaces. "Don't you have other friends or something? Stay with them."
"Yuto," Yuya says. "Gongenzaka would tell me to stand and face Zarc, Sora is a gamble at best, and Sawatari is… a last resort."
"I'd offer to hide you like the fugitive you are, but my apartment is actually a literal deathtrap," Judai says, patting Yuya sympathetically on the shoulder. "I have a… paranoid roommate. She won't disarm the security system for guests - just ask my friend Johan, the last time he came over he nearly lost an arm. Then again, she never did like Johan much..."
"I don't have room," Yusei says, apologetic. "Jack, Crow, and I just got a new roommate, and we don't have enough space as it is especially since our place doubles as a garage. I'm sorry."
"I have a class trip," Yuma says, looking pained. "I'll be gone all week and my teacher told me if I skipped it I would repeat this year. My friends would kill me if I got held back a year. Shark would eat me alive. And my sis and gram are going on vacation while I'm gone."
Yusaku realizes after a few moments that everyone is looking at him.
"I have three reasons why that would be a bad idea," Yusaku says, but never gets to list them, because at that moment Yuya looks at him like he's all he had left in the world with enormously round and shiny eyes, and Yusaku's protests die on his tongue.