a/n: This chapter is practically one year late on FF because I kept forgetting my FF account exists. I recommend following this story on AO3 if you want to see updates right when they come out.

Judai has been chosen to teach a new hire how to do his job so he doesn't have to. Most people call that "being fired" but Yugi is nice, so he phrases it like "you've been promoted". There is zero change in his job title because it's still 'waiter ' , the only difference ends up being is that he no longer has to run salad bar role or support duties, because they've gone and hired someone Young and New and Shiny to do these roles for them, in addition to the other Young and New and Shiny kid they already hired for that exact purpose.

Which is all great, probably, but for some reason, this means Judai is supposed to be a job trainer for two whole days.

"I thought being promoted was supposed to be a good thing," Judai says, sitting in his seat backwards and slouching over the top of the chair. "Like, I thought it was that I get less work to do. Doesn't Yusei have more experience training people anyway? Shouldn't he train this Yuya kid like he did with Yuma?"

"That was the plan, until Yusei showed up to work soaking wet and with a fever," Atem says, leaning on Yugi's desk. Atem has a perfectly nice and empty desk just a few feet away, but he seldom uses it, instead choosing to crowd around Yugi's whenever they're both in the room. "Now we have no choice. Congratulations."

Normally, Yusei is immune to all sorts of sickness, so Judai is reasonably sure this must be a sign that the end is near, and that Yusei is probably going to die from hypothermia or something equally incurable.

"Yusei insists that I not take him to the hospital," Yugi says, his face stuck somewhere between concerned and exasperated. "I'm particularly worried about how high his temperature is… And he won't go home either. He's acting rather strange today, so I don't want him to be left alone."

"He can't be near the food or customers in this state," Atem says. "So you either train Yuya Sakaki, or you watch over Yusei."

"Do I get to pick which job I'd prefer?"

"No."

So Judai gets ready to meet Yuya Sakaki for training on his first day on the job.

Jokes on Atem, being out in the main area with a trainee working is slightly more appealing than tending to the sick anyway. Judai feels a little sorry for Yusei, but not sorry enough to fight for the chance to catch that fever.

He's stuck waiting by the door, though, because this Yuya kid is late , so Judai practices balancing plates, thinking about an old TV show he watched as a kid, about heroes and aliens and by the time Judai snaps out of it, he's been waiting for like, forty five minutes.

Judai begins tapping at the podium in impatience, waiting has never been his strong suit.

...What is their late policy anyway? Is Judai supposed to like, be the Responsible Adult and chastise the kid when he gets here? That doesn't sound like something he would do, but then again, there's that promise he made to Sho's brother about growing up, so maybe he should give it a go?

It was a really dramatic speech, promising his best friend's brother that he'd mature while said brother was experiencing actual heart failure, and while he might've gotten very caught up in the moment, Judai meant every word of it. But there's being a grown up and being a jerk while pretending it was being grown up. The last time he tried, it ended up being the latter. He isn't very good at this, but at least he's trying? But would Yuya know the difference?

While Judai is debating the virtues of being mature, seconds away from making a venn diagram with the crayons they have stashed nearby for children, someone bursts through the door wearing a crooked nametag and a very loose necktie, and they're definitely no one Judai has seen before.

"Uh. Are you Yuya?" Judai asks, putting the crayons down.

"Yeah. Sorry I'm late. Are you Yusei Fudo?" Yuya asks, slightly out of breath. "I was told I was supposed to be training with him today."

Judai's first impression of Yuya Sakaki is… he's dressed in awfully bright colors for such a dour kid. Even from a few feet away, he can tell this Yuya kid emits an aura of gloominess that Judai suspects that goths can only dream of obtaining.

"Sorry, Yusei's busy dying in the break room right now," Judai says. "I'll be training you in his place instead. Nice to meet you."

"I — Did you say someone's dying ?" Yuya asks, his eyebrows rising upwards. "I was told this is supposed to be a normal restaurant job."

"It is, Yusei's caught a fever from non-work related activities," Judai says, tossing the kid his nametag. "He's a rebel without a cause right now, free from his previous gang-related activities, so who knows what he's doing off hours that got him all wet in the middle of the winter."

"He has — what? "

"We here at the, uh, millennial whatever cafe do not support getting the... pneumonia… plague, or advocate its existence." Judai says, handing Yuya a menu. Yuya clutches it like a shield, looking at Judai like he's not sure how serious he is. "He's probably still getting paid for showing up though, Yugi is such a softie. But don't let his eyes fool you. Yugi is lethal at poker."

"Who's Yugi? Who are you? "

"My name's Judai Yuki! C'mon, let's get started." Judai takes the kid by the shoulders and rushes him to the kitchen, while Yuya wears a look resembling a deer caught in headlights.

"Could you — just, try not to look like you've been sent to assassinate Maximillion Pegasus?" Judai asks, a bit desperately, after Yuya has inadvertently scared off another customer with his face when asked to bring out more salad plates. If looks could kill, Judai wouldn't have enough time to bury all the bodies before the cops showed up. "You gotta loosen up, man, seriously. Can you smile? Just a little? Please?"

"Why?" Yuya turns to glower on him, and Judai suppresses the immediate fight or flight instinct it gives him. "I'm just here to work."

"It makes people feel better when they're not being glared at or, you know, feeling like they're eating somewhere where a dark phantom isn't about to cut them in half for giving a bad tip."

He looks unconvinced, so Judai tries a different approach.

"Smiling makes people happy, you know?" Judai demonstrates with his own face. "When things are rough, a smile can go a long way. Even if we're just a restaurant, we should do our best to help people at least feel comfortable while they're here, and not spend all our time brooding in the corner."

Yuya, to Judai's relief, drops some of the tenseness in his shoulders, slouching forward and sighing.

"I understand. Sorry," Yuya says, looking at his reflection in the glass window, and eventually his mouth curls up a little at the corners, like he's remembering something nice. "Smile… Yeah, I can do that."

The next day, Yusei still shows up to work — sicker than a dog, communicates more in coughs than in actual words, and still refuses to take a single tablet of tylenol.

"I'm going to spike your food," Judai tells him, handing Yusei a glass of water. He's waiting for Yuya to show up, and he's late by… two hours? So he's killing time by trying to convince Yusei to do something that's good for his health. "Like, it'll be so full of medicine that it'll be beyond obvious but by then you'll be hallucinating from your high temperature and won't even notice."

Yusei thanks him with a barking cough that forces him to double over before he's even able to take the glass. By now, Judai's convinced that Yusei is attempting to communicate via morse code and his coughing.

"I'm. Fine." Yusei manages, gritting his teeth.

"Yes, those sure are the words you've been repeating since yesterday," Judai responds. "Just like nearly passing out every time you stand up are sure fire signs of good health. Hey, what's the protocol for when a new hire is super late again on the second day?"

Yusei looks up, and even with his flushed face he manages to look concerned with him.

"Yuya Sakaki still isn't here yet?" Yusei whispers hoarsely.

"Nope," Judai says. "Yuma came in to cover — he got in a fight with one of his friends or something and decided that working on a Saturday is better than, quote, ' listening to Astral question literally everything I do like he's new to humanity as a whole, all day every day' . So I guess I'm not being fired after all."

"Fired?"

"Okay, fine, promoted , whatever. I'm still running support staff… support, since I'm not on the support staff but I'm still supporting them so—"

"Um, Judai?" Yuma sticks his head into the room, pressing a small bag of ice to his forehead. "Yuya has arrived, and he's… creeping out the customers out front. Can you make him stop, please?"

"What happened to your face?" Judai asks, ever the pinnacle of the word tactful .

"I don't want to talk about it," Yuma says, wearing the world's most adorable scowl. He enters the room refusing to make eye contact with him, and sits down next to Yusei, and if that's not the bravest thing Judai's ever seen then nothing is. Kids have no fear in the face of illness. Yusei is looking at him a bit strangely.

"What's that in your—" Yusei coughs. "In your hand?"

"An icepack."

"The other hand."

"Oh, this?" Yuma holds it up, something shiny dangling from a string. "I dunno, found it when I was walking to work this morning. I wanted to try and see if I could get here in record time — kattobingo — so I was taking a bunch of weird and random shortcuts and that's where I found this. I didn't beat my record, by the way, but I'm sure I'll get it next time!"

"Is it like a rock necklace or something?" Judai asks, glancing at it idly, while dumping an entire bottle of DayQuil into Yusei's soup.

"I guess?" Yuma stuffs it into his pocket. "I think it's one of those spinning things, I forget what they're called. It might be fake. It just looked cool, so I picked it up."

"So you normally pick up trash you find on the ground?"

Yusei throws a tissue box at Judai's head.

"Ow!" Judai glares at Yusei, who meets it head on. "Come on, you know what I mean! Not like trash trash, but stuff someone probably threw out! Useless stuff."

"Nothing is useless," Yusei says softly. "Nothing is trash."

"I'm going to chalk that up to being fever talk."

Yusei throws the bottle of medicine at him next.

" Ow ! Stop that!"

"Can you go deal with Yuya already? Jeez." Yuma sinks back into the sofa, kicking his legs out. Yusei sides with Yuma, and stares at him pointedly in agreement.

"Fine, fine, I'm going."

So Judai throws another tablet of Make Sickness Go Away Pills at Yusei (that Yusei still dodges, even with fever dulled reflexes), and goes to make Yuya stop doing whatever it is he's doing.

Yuya Sakaki is… just standing by the front podium where the host stands, projecting air of extreme smugness, one that Judai would argue rivaled the Manjoume brothers themselves.

"I'm sorry," Yuya purrs to a young couple waiting to be seated. "We don't have any booths open."

"There's… There's one right behind you. There are multiple booths open, I can see them from right here . "

"They're not open." Yuya repeats, with a smile full of teeth. "Bye."

This kid's facial expression have made leaps and bounds from yesterday, having morphed from stone faced serious into leering and uncomfortably arrogant. Judai is pretty sure this cannot be counted as an improvement.

"Hey, uh, Yuya," Judai slides in between them. "Let's give them the seat behind us and get back to… training. Sorry for the delay."

The customers look relieved, and Yuya looks put out, like a child who's plaything had been confiscated by the Toddler Police.

"You know you were supposed to be here two hours ago, right?" Judai says, once the customers have been safely seated in a corner of the restaurant very far, far away from where Yuya could feasibly find them while training.

"Was I? Must have slipped my mind," Yuya says, wearing a look that says he was fully aware of when he was supposed to be in.

"...Okay." Judai says. "Let's uh, just get back to training okay? We covered the salad bar yesterday, so today we can move onto laundry—"

"Actually," Yuya says, examining his nails. "I've completely forgotten everything I've learned yesterday. Can we do it again? Laundry sounds terribly boring anyway."

Judai is really, really wishing Yusei had never gotten sick.

"Okay," Judai says, his voice hitting a pitch that's slightly higher than normal. "Okay, so, murder isn't allowed in this building ."

"They're not dead , what kind of amatuer do you think I am?" Yuya rolls his eyes with a huff. "You can't punish corpses for trying to dine and dash, after all. I'm doing you a favor here."

"Favors don't involve us getting sued for assault and unlawful detainment ," Judai says, considering locking Yugi inside his own office so he can't come outside and have a heart attack upon seeing three teens duct taped together and dangling from a nearby tree.

"Whatever," Yuya yawns. "You might want to call the cops before they fall, though, because I'm certainly not cleaning this up."

And then Yuya leaves Judai alone with three people tied to a tree branch, strolling off in the direction of the front doors.

"Uh. So, I don't have a phone right now," Judai tells the teens. "But um, I'm sure we have a pair of scissors inside somewhere…?"

One of the teenagers bursts into tears.

"Feeding customer's food to carnivorous plants isn't normal, right?" Judai whines, while Yugi patiently ignores him. "Why did you guys even hire a kid with — with vicious evil plants ?"

"This is why you don't touch carnivorous plants," Yugi says, patting Judai's bandaged hand gently.

"How was I supposed to know they'd come alive and snap their jaws of death on me? Please tell me Yusei is better now. I'd like to stop having to be the responsible one."

"Yusei isn't here. He might have decided to stay home today," Yugi says, but the confidence in his voice is slightly ruined by him checking the window as if Yusei would sneak in through there. "...But if you see him, please tell him to go home."

"Sure, but I'm pretty sure that's going to work as well as it did the last twelve times you suggested it."

Right on cue, they hear the rev of a motorcycle pull into the parking lot. Yugi makes a face, and promptly draws the shutters so he doesn't have to face the awful truth — he has a employee with a strong work ethic. It's tragic.

Judai goes outside, finding Yusei and some passenger on a bike that's not Yusei's usual bike. Where did he get this? Green with yellow racing stripes? Those aren't Yusei's favorite colors. Judai doesn't actually know what Yusei's favorite colors are, but they probably aren't green and yellow anyway.

"You know, if you keep showing up to work sick, Yugi may actually pretend to fire you to keep you home," Judai says, strolling up to this substitute motorcycle. "Nice bike. What happened to your old one?"

"I'm borrowing it from a friend," Yusei says, taking off his helmet. He's not as pale as yesterday, and while his voice is still kind of scratchy and soft, he's sounding better than before, so Judai counts that as progress . "I'm using it until I can find mine."

"Find it? Where'd it go?"

"...Someone took it," Yusei says, and his face is actually kind of scary for a second, in the way that it tightens and how his eyes narrow — Judai gets the feeling that this is a serious personal matter, and wants to pry a little, because Yusei handling issues alone was half the reason he was hired, but Yusei is also a stickler for keeping things private. "That's kind of what I came here today for, actually. I might not be able to come in for the next couple of days, so I was hoping to ask if can you cover for me?"

"You're actually taking a few days off?" Judai says, bouncing on his heels. "Yugi will be over the moon. I knew putting drugs in your food would was a good idea."

"The amount of medicine you put in was enough to subdue a small bear," Yusei informs him. "If you wanted to kill me, you could have just said so."

Classic Yusei.

At this point, the mystery passenger Judai had completely forgotten is there to remind them all of their presence, by jumping off the bike and promptly tripping on the ground. The helmet he's wearing protects his head, so no harm done to anything important, but the kid still rolls around on the ground like he's been mortally wounded.

"Yuya?" Yusei asks, blinking in mild confusion. "Are you alright?"

"That's Yuya?" Judai inches away, still thinking about predator plants and how teeth should never be on fauna. "Why do you have Yuya with you?"

"I found him on the other side of the city," Yusei says. "He seemed lost, so I gave him a ride here."

"I'mmfinee," Yuya says, yanking his helmet off. "Fine!"

"Sure you are buddy," Judai says, giving the kid a helping hand up, once he's sure he isn't hiding some man-eating plant on him this time. Yuya positively beams at him, and takes Judai's hand with a surprising amount of grip. "You're uh, late again though."

"I couldn't find the right station to get off at," Yuya says, grumbling. "If I had a bike I would have been here on time , and it would just be way cooler. But I'm still in the process of getting the right parts and I want this really particular computer chip for it but Rin says we don't have enough money for it so—"

"How old are you, again?" Judai asks.

"Uh, I'm fo—," Yuya starts to answer, and then freezes, eyes wide. "...What did I put on my application?"

Something legal and truthful, Judai's hoping, because while Judai is kind of lax when it came to following rules and guidelines, Yugi is the one who'd have to deal with all the issues of hiring a teenagers not quite old enough to work. Atem though, Atem makes exceptions, and he would probably figure out a work around. Maybe.

"I need to get going," Yusei says, breaking the stalemate Judai had going between his own Inner Yugi and Inner Atem, arguing about child labor laws. "I'll be back this evening to talk to Yugi. I'm sorry to ask this of you so suddenly, Judai."

"You better," Judai says. "I'm probably going to be pulling a bunch of non-stop shifts to cover for you. You are banned from ever getting sick again, by the way."

Yusei smiles at that.

"Thanks for the ride!" Yuya says, looking starry eyed. "And um, I really like your bike, even though it's not yours exactly, and I really hope you get your old one back! I can't imagine what it'd be like to have mine stolen."

Yuya can't imagine it, but apparently he can really empathize, because Judai sees tears almost well up in his eyes. Judai also spies a few strands of blonde poking out from beneath that red and green mess he calls hair. Does he dye his hair? How many colors does one need until they're satisfied?

"Thank you," Yusei takes back the extra helmet from Yuya and puts his own on. "I'll see you both again soon. Good luck, Yuya."

Yusei speeds off in what Judai can only assume is an immediate violation of every speed limit in the city, because Yusei drives fast and never looks back, kicking up a storm of dust in the parking lot. Yuya stares like he's just watched his own personal hero drive off into the sunset.

"So, ready to start your shift?" Judai says, checking his watch. "...One hour behind schedule?"

"Right, yeah, work," Yuya says, turning his attention away from the road. "So, I was totally paying attention before, but just in case, pretend that I wasn't listening. What am I doing again?"

And so Judai plans on Day Three of what was supposed to be only a two day training session.

Yuya is clearly Trying His Best, but it's kind of like he's never been in a restaurant before and it's like watching a maelstrom of good intentions vs bad handling in human form. Judai might've found this more amusing if he hadn't known Yuya, but since he unfortunately does, it just makes him concerned.

"Is Yuya okay?" Yuma asks, while Judai tries drowning his sorrows in soda. "Yesterday I tried talking to him and he tripped me into a wall . Today I said hi and Yuya dropped all the salad bowls into the garbage can because I startled him."

"Nothing is okay," Judai says, wondering if this is how Yugi felt when training him. "Everything is weird."

"Can you like, make sense or something?" Yuma makes a face at him, probably because Judai is at least half contributing to the weirdness itself. "You sound like Astral right now and it's really annoying."

"Who's Astral again?" Judai asks, lying his face on the counter.

"This weird guy who's living at my house for this abroad program thing," Yuma says, wiping down the counter, and pushing Judai's face out of the way as needed. "He's like, from a different country and all which is cool, but I don't think he's ever talked to a human being in his life before, he follows me around and always tries telling me what to do. It's like having a second older sister! But even worse because at least Akari doesn't follow me around at school."

Judai kind of wonders how Yuma even landed a job in a restaurant when it's a never ending series of doing what people tell you to do, but maybe Yuma has a better understanding of the separation between work life and personal life than Judai does.

"I dunno, Yuya has mood swings or something," Judai says, rolling out of the way of Yuma's cleaning spray. "He was pretty good at this on the first day. Aside from the fact everyone was terrified of him."

"Maybe you should help him out," Yuma says, looking dubiously over at where Yuya is trying to refill the food at the salad bar. "I think he's putting the carrots in the tortellini dish."

"You are a fellow kid," Judai says, "You go help him."

"Not happening. Besides, you're not that much older than me and helping him is actually your job right now."

He can't argue with basic logic, unfortunately, so Judai goes to the salad bar with an open mind but a cautious heart.

"We can probably salvage an engine, that would be easier," Yuya is muttering to himself, while indeed pouring carrots into the wrong dish, oblivious to this fact. "But it probably wouldn't work with the frame blueprints I've made, I'd have to remake the thing entirely. "

"Yuya?"

"It'd make more sense to build one from scratch, but finding the materials for that would take way more time… Not to mention Rin's still concerned about how much everything will cost…"

" Yuya ." Judai reaches out and shakes his shoulder.

"Huh?" Yuya flails for half a second, before righting himself. Judai catches the pitcher of carrots because it can become a orange massacre on the floor. Yuya blinks for a second. "What?" "

"I was calling your name."

" My name?" Yuya scowls, like Judai had the gall to somehow mispronounce it. "My name is Yu—... uuuuuya, yes."

There is only so much strangeness that Judai can take before even he starts to suspect that something is off.

"Okay," Judai says, thinking of that promise to be an adult and coming to a regretful conclusion that it was time to make good on that promise. "Okay. Okay ."

"Uh...?"

"I don't really know what's up with you, or if you've got some kind of multiple mood swing personality disorder," Judai says. "But I'm beginning to get kind of worried? Like, yesterday you nearly killed me, and the day before you were really mad and gloomy, and today you're like, some kind of weird fusion of—"

"WHO ARE YOU CALLING FUSION," Yuya screeches, undoubtedly destroying Judai's eardrums and startling Yuma from halfway across the room. "MY NAME IS YUGO NOT — oh, oh no."

"What," Judai says.

"Crap," Yugo says.

Half an hour later, Judai is witnessing a line of doppelgangers sit in Yugi's office, with varying degrees of guilt and annoyance apparent on their identical faces. It's like a surrealistic painting, a wash out of colors that did not compliment each other. Beneath what was apparently the world's most tomato colored wig was hair that equally defied expectation — Yugo's hair appeared to resemble a blueberry banana swirl smoothie, and the other two had hair that Judai could not believe fit under a hairpiece.

"Way to go, Fusion ," the Second Doppelganger sneers, his hair two shades of bright purple, shaped like a tarantula who figured out how to make itself three sizes too big.

The First Doppelganger, Living Proof Punk Isn't Dead, the beginning of this terrible cycle, the betrayer of Judai's trust , also had hair that was kind of purple, kind of really dark, and now matched that aura of sheer punk and sulkiness that Judai had pegged upon first seeing him.

"Shut up Yuri," Yugo, The Third and Hopefully Final Doppelganger, kicks Yuri's chair. "You nearly got Yuya arrested but somehow I'm the mess up here?"

"But I didn't, did I? Besides, Yuto agrees with me," Yuri says, kicking him back.

"We wouldn't have gotten caught if you had more brains than a pawn," First Doppelganger, Yuto apparently, mutters.

"So before I call your parents," Atem says, holding a flip phone that looks old enough to rival the children sitting before him. "Do you want to tell me why you all felt like pretending to be 'Yuya Sakaki' and playing at being an employee here?"

Silence.

Yusei is standing behind Yugi, leaning against the wall and showing off how well he can be perfectly still like a statue. Yuma is nodding off beside Judai, sitting on Atem's empty desk and jerking awake every time he starts leaning a little too hard to the side. Yugi, sitting behind his desk, shares a glance with Atem. Judai is hoping they decide to vocalize whatever mental conversation they're having with their weird maybe twin maybe soulmate powers that Judai is absolutely certain exists when there's a soft knock at the door.

Yuma gets up to open it, blinking the weariness out of his eyes. When he opens it, he just stares for a bit.

"Another? Which one are you?" Yuma asks with a yawn, and isn't that a terrifying sentence to hear when Judai only has one side of the conversation within view.

"The one and only," says someone, shoving their way into the room.

Judai instantly recognizes the hair, because, well, he's been training "Yuya Sakaki" all week, and that tomato inspired hairstyle is disctive enough that Judai's sure he could've picked it out from the produce section with both eyes closed. The main difference with this one is there's a pair of goggles strapped to his head, the lens opaque and featuring a star design.

"Yuya!" Yuto sits up, looking like an alarmed cat. "What are you—"

"Hi," Yuya #4 says, looking past his twins and right at Atem and Yugi. "I'm Yuya Sakaki, it's nice to meet you."

"Are you supposed to be the real one?" Yuma asks, eyeing his hair like he's tempted to check if it's a wig. "Because if not, this joke is getting really old."

"I'd do a backflip for you if that could prove my overused identity," Yuya says. "But unfortunately, I'm in a bit of a bind you see."

Judai watches as Yuya adjusts the jacket draped over his shoulders, and reveals an arm in a sling.

"Broken?" Yusei asks, frowning.

"Very broken in at least three places," Yuya says, "It's why my brothers here were impersonating me for the week. I can't do very much with my arm like this."

"Why didn't you just tell us?" Yugi asks, hands folded on his desk. "Why go to the extreme of having your brothers pretend to be you?"

"It was the simpler option," Yuya shrugs, and then winces, his good arm going to cradle the cast.

Judai can't really imagine a scenario where that is the 'simpler option', and he's the ruling supreme king at ridiculous scenarios, three years running. He's about to make this point verbally, but Atem stops leaning on Yugi's desk and walks up to Yuya before that, and well, in the interest of getting his paycheck Judai cuts himself off.

"How did you break your arm?" Atem says, his eyes narrowing.

"Tripped and fell down some stairs," Yuya says, without pause. "Happened a few days ago."

"Is that so?" Atem says, looking just as unconvinced as the time Judai tried calling in sick from the parking lot, where Judai could see Yugi and Atem through the window.

"If you don't believe me," Yuya says, fishing something out his pocket with his good hand. "I'm actually trending on most popular streaming sites at the moment."

"On what now?" Atem says, squinting at the video Yuya begins playing from his phone. From Judai's position, he can see absolutely nothing, but the sounds tell enough of a story: indistinct yelling, wind, general sounds of people running, and then a very clear " oh shit, yuya! " followed by what Judai guesses are the sounds of someone falling down several flights of stairs. After a few seconds Judai hears a faint, " ow ".

"And this is… 'trending' ?" Atem asks as Yuya puts his phone aside, and he most certainly does not know what that means but no one is willing to call him out on it right now. "It's a video of you and another attempting parkour and you then tumbling down some stairs resulting in serious injury."

"You don't go on the internet much, do you," Yuri says, doing that unpleasant thing with his face. "Yuya's pain is hilarious , but that isn't the problem here."

"There are thousands of videos of people doing dumb stuff on the internet," Yuma yawns. "My friends have posted a ton of videos of me running into walls or tripping over flat ground, and it's never gotten like five hundred thousand views."

"You don't even need my help walking into walls," Yuri says, smiling eerily. "Amazing. You truly are prime example of the idiocy of regular teenagers."

While Yuma makes a face at the eggplant child, Yuya ignores them and continues with his testimony.

"Would you believe my brother does this for a living?" Yuya says. "This isn't the first video I've helped him with, but I've uh, never quite wiped out so badly before and. I guess I wasn't ready to deal with the backlash of failure. Like father like son, huh?"

Yuya laughs, but it's more painful than anything to hear, laughter so fake and rehearsed it made Judai's skin crawl. Yusei and Judai share a glance. This is awkward. Very, very awkward. And Judai is trying to make a lot of subtle hand gestures at Yusei because they should do something right? They should help right? But Yusei just blinks at him slowly, so maybe Judai isn't good at communicating via desperate hand signals.

"Zarc said he wasn't going to post it," Yuto speaks up, but he never removes his gaze from the floor. "He acted so upset when he saw you, he promised not to post it, but then he goes and does it anyway because he thought it would garner a lot of views. And it did , but now we can't even go outside without being harassed by people who want to push you down another set of stairs because it looked funny on camera and it's all because of him . "

"It's not fair to say it's Zarc's fault," Yuya says, turning to Yuto. " I'm the one who fell like an idiot, it's not like he pushed me."

"Then how is that your fault?" Yugo says, throwing his arms up. "You tripped! It happens! What isn't fair is putting that on a channel with seven million subscribers and just telling us to suck it up! Everyone is picking on us about it too! I can't go five blocks without someone asking if I'm the ' stair guy from the Zarc video' ! But it's even worse for you, and we all know it!"

"Fusion here has a point," Yuri says, examines his nails like this whole situation is beneath him. "It's not like our brother is incapable of video editing and cutting your part out. That video was also just another in a short series about him climbing all the building in this city, which has been done to death already . He didn't even need to post it, but he did, and we're suffering the consequences for it. Time to face the facts brother, Zarc doesn't care about us anymore, except for what we can give him in view numbers."

"You're wrong," Yuya says, his good hand going to grab at something around his neck, but his hand encloses on nothing but air, and eventually he puts it back down. "He cares. Zarc has always looked out for us. He drove me to the hospital, he paid for the medical bills. He said he was sorry."

"He paid for all that with the money he earned posting that video," Yuri sneers, leaning forward. "Did you know? He's considering launching a mini series where he pranks us on camera, something else he promised he'd never do when he started doing this whole vlogging thing. I heard him discussing it with one of his friends. It's all harmless fun, except we're stuck paying for it. We're just a means to an end."

"Shut up—!"

" Enough ," Atem says, loud and clear, and all the bickering becomes silent. "This is clearly a personal matter that I think you all should deal with as a family."

Yuya reaches up and adjusts his goggles, pulling them down so they cover his eyes. He looks remarkably emotionless, then, with his eyes hidden and his face set to something resembling stone. Judai thinks it's — very sad, and looks practiced. Like he's had to do this many times.

"But for what it's worth," Atem says, with a small sigh. "I understand why you choose to do what you've done. I won't call your parents. It seems clear you've had a lot of things to deal with, and I am not unsympathetic to them. You can all go home."

"It's late. We'll call you kids a taxi," Yugi says, grabbing the landline and beginning to dial a number.

This is — inconclusive. This is bad . Why aren't they helping out these — these four children ? They're barely teenagers but he can just feel the misery in the air, kids who are suffering from something dumb and not their fault . Judai opens his mouth to say something but Atem cuts him off with just a sharp glance. Judai knows that look. It's the same look he gives him whenever they're talking about something and Atem already knows the endgame, and the path to not messing it up. But Atem also wants them to just stay silent! Judai throws another glance at statue Yusei, who looks equally conflicted, and Yugi, who is staring at the phone in a very distracted way.

And then, Yuma walks up to Yuya.

"Hey," Yuma says, and Yuya turns his head very slight to face him, face stone cold and closed off. "What school do you go to?"

"I — why? What does it matter?"

"What school?" Yuma presses.

"Miami Second Junior High," Yuya relents, tugging at the jacket hanging around his shoulder as evidence.

"I go to Heartland," Yuma says, unfolding his arms. "But they're pretty close yeah? Like maybe ten, fifteen minutes away if you use the subway."

"Yeah, I guess so."

"Cool, then it's settled. After school my friends and I will find you at Miami and we'll walk you guys home."

"You'll do what now?" Yugo says, sitting up in his chair.

"Walk you home. Or I guess wherever you wanna go? My friends will probably cool hanging out with you too." Yuma says, scratching the back of his neck. "Though we're gonna have to walk you to work too I guess, which is going to be a pain if we're on different shifts. But you're support staff too right? So we should be fine."

"Why would we be caught dead walking with you ?" Yuri drawls.

" Because ," Yuma says, "I have a lot of friends. And we all walk together, we'll be a crowd. I can't guarantee nobody won't still like, approach, but they'll have a harder time bothering you with us around. I could probably even get Shark to scare some people off if I beg hard enough, though, ugh, he is not going to like being seen with a large group of people."

"Strength in numbers!" Judai blurts out.

" Why ?" Yuya asks.

"Oh, Shark's a loner," Yuma shrugs. "He's really got this tough guy personality or whatever and he spends all his time skipping class on the roof but somehow hasn't been suspended? Which is super unfair because—"

"No, not that, I don't even know who Shark is," Yuya interrupts, pulling his goggles back up. "Why would you do that? I don't even know you."

"Um, because you're upset and getting picked on by people?" Yuma asks, like it's the simplest answer in the world. "And I can help? I don't really get the question."

Four identical looking people stare at him in what feels like disbelief, or maybe just a stunned silence. Judai can't really see all their expressions from his angle, but Yuto's head is turned at such an angle that it cannot be good for his spinal cord, and Yugo is practically bursting with energy, only being confined to his seat by Yuri pulling on the back of his shirt.

"Like a pendulum," Yuya mutters, a smile tugging at one corner of his mouth. "Weirdness just swings back and forth to us, huh? This is not what I expected when I applied for a job here."

"A pendu— oh!" Yuma says, then starts digging through his pockets, until he pulls out the piece of garbage he showed Judai and Yusei the other day. He holds it up, shining in the dim light of Yugi's office, swinging from Yuma to Yuya. "Hey, weird question, but do you want this?"

And Yuya snatches it out of Yuma's hands so quick Judai doesn't even see the exchange, just Yuma with a pendulum one second, Yuya cradling it to his chest in the next. His brothers abandon their chairs and crowd around him, all pushing each other aside to get a better look.

"No way."

"That's definitely Dad's pendulum."

"I thought I'd never see it again."

"Didn't you lose it when you fell down those stairs? How'd it get here ?"

They collectively turn to Yuma, and it is creepy how they move like a single unit with a hive mind. Yuma apparently isn't bothered by it.

"I found it while on my way here a couple days ago. Weird right?" Yuma says, way too relaxed compared to everyone else in the room. He gently tugs on the pendant around his own his neck. "I have a necklace from my Dad too, from both my parents actually. It's super important to me. I don't know what I'd do if something happened to it. I just got a similar feeling when I saw yours lying on the ground so I picked it up and—"

Yuma doesn't get to finish, because in the next second Yuya takes two incredibly fast steps forward and grabs Yuma in a tight hug.

"Thank you," Yuya says, and his shoulders start shaking. " Thank you. "

Atem kicks them all out of the office because it was getting too crowded and Atem makes up rules whenever he wants, apparently, and he expects them to follow his orders. When Judai, the last the leave walks out the door, he takes one last look inside. Atem and Yugi are wearing identical smiles, like this is how they knew it would turn out.

Their weird mental mind twin soulmate powers are terrifying .

"The taxi will be here soon," Yusei says, leaning against the bar. Out of the corner of his eye, Judai sees Yugo, hiding behind one of the booths, and watching Yusei with stars in his eyes. "After the kids go home, I'll help close up, and then I'll drive Yuma home."

"Don't you have some punk to beat up for stealing your bike or something?" Judai asks, pouring himself a glass of soda.

"Not exactly," Yusei smiles, albeit faintly. "Just a score to settle with a friend. That's all."

Progress .

"Besides," Yusei continues. "I shouldn't dump all my work on you to go after a lost cause. To be honest, I probably won't be getting it back. And I… don't want to leave all my friends behind to go chasing after my bike. I might actually have to take up more hours here instead of less once I'm not sick."

"More hours? Why?"

"Since I'll probably have to build a new motorcycle from scratch again." Yusei sighs. "A lot of those parts I salvaged from junk yards, and I'll probably have to do it again. But being able to buy some of the more complicated parts would save me a lot of time."

"Can I pick the color of your new bike?" Judai asks.

"Sure."

"This means a lot to me," Yuya says, while his brothers bicker about who gets shotgun. He's clutching the pendulum in his good hand, pressing it close to his heart. "I mean it. It's the last thing my Dad gave to me before he disappeared. I can't believe you, of all people in this city, found it, at this random restaurant I applied to. It's like fate."

Sometimes it seems like world has something planned for you, Yusei told him once, when Yuma first met him, like it has a set path for you to follow. But that's not it. Destiny exists only as a concept — you make your own future. Fate is something we create for ourselves.

"Guess that's just how things work out sometimes, huh?" Yuma says, staring out the window and into the sky, dotted with a handful of stars. Wondering if somewhere out there, Mom and Dad are watching over him and Akari. "I'm really glad I could get it back to you."

"And that thing about walking with us to school and stuff…" Yuya says, "You really meant that?"

"Yeah, of course. Well, okay, I need to actually ask my friends first but once I explain it to them there's no way they'd say no, I promise."

"Thanks," Yuya says, and then barks out a short laugh. "Hey, what's your name? You already know mine because of my brothers, but I don't actually know any of your names."

"He's Yuma Tsukumo." Someone who is not Yuma answers, and Yuma turns to see Yugi walking out of his office towards them, posture open and friendly like a field full of sunshine and tall grass. Atem follows shortly behind him. "You'll get to know the rest of your coworkers when you're fit to work again."

"Work what now."

"Work," Atem says. "You are an employee here, and while we're granting you time off to heal, we do expect you to return once you're ready to do so. But only you. We hired one Yuya, not four."

"You mean I'm… not fired?" Yuya asks, eyebrows shooting upwards and blinking at Yugi and Atem so many times Yuma starts to wonder if there's something wrong with his eyes.

"No, Yuya, you're not fired," Yugi says. "And as long as you're not quitting, we'd be glad to have you work here."

"I… yeah, sure," Yuya says, nodding like he isn't sure if he's still in reality or another dimension anymore. "Thank you. For everything."

"Judai!" Atem turns and shouts over where Yusei and Judai are talking, and Judai is startled into spilling his soda. "When Yuya gets back, you're in charge of training him."

"Seriously? Again? "