Day 21: "Maxed"

Yusuke tosses the controller down and stretched his arms over his head, leaning to the left until his shoulder cracked and popped. "Man, I'm beat. Wanna go get some food?"

"Beat?" Leaning off of the bed toward Yusuke in his spot on the floor in front of the TV, I dug my knuckles into his hair, giving him a firm noogie. "But we're almost to the final dungeon! The only beat you should be is beating the Big Bad!"

He rolled out from under my hand and stod up. "What's the rush, Tex?" Dark brown eyes glimmered over his green-clad shoulder. "I'm thinkin' we hit up that Korean barbecue joint a few blocks over." When I didn't say anything, he threw me a lazy grin. "C'mon. My treat."

"Well." I stood, too. "If you're paying…"

No matter how happy I felt at the prospect of Yusuke covering dinner (for once), his offer felt… odd. We'd been playing through Dragon Quest IV for quite some time now—since a few months before the Dark Tournament, to be precise. We'd spent the two weeks following the tournament playing the game whenever we could, gathering our final magic items and exploring the last forgotten corners of the overworld map in preparation for the final dungeon and boss fight. With no internet to consult for hints or cheats (neither of our families owned computers, and it wasn't like Yusuke would set foot in the library to use their computer on purpose), the going was slow as we grinded out our final levels and forged our last bits of high-spec armor. Still, the process of blindly feeling our way through the game was a fun one, and we were at last well-outfitted and high-leveled enough to have a go at the game's final dungeon.

And yes, Yusuke just… didn't feel like it?

Made no sense whatsoever to me. But since he was a stubborn ass, I knew arguing wouldn't do much, so I just walked with him to the barbecue place in silence. I bided my time until the next time he came over, firing up the Famicon practically as soon as he walked into my bedroom.

But Yusuke just looked at it and shrugged, aiming a thumb over his shoulder and out the door. "I think there's some wrestling on. A championship match. Wanna watch that instead?"

"Um, excuse you?" The Dragon Quest intro music hummed in the background, light and electronic and exciting. "We have an evil overlord to murder, don't we?"

"He'll be there when we get to him," said Yusuke. "The championship is only on tonight!"

I started to argue with him. But something coiled tight in Yusuke's eyes, a tension like strung piano wire, and I accompanied him out the door.

Not that going to watch the fight with him wasn't fun or anything. It involved sneaking in the back door of a neighborhood beer garden where they were playing the match on cable, hiding in a dark corner by the kitchen so we wouldn't be spotted (and where we could sneakily skim beers when they came out of the bar). Sneaking around with Yusuke always proved entertaining, and we'd done this enough times to make a nice game of it—but he didn't seem as engaged or happy as I thought he'd be. He snuck and crept into the bar with little enthusiasm, and even when the fight started playing, I caught him staring off into space and hardly paying attention to it in the first place. Why had he dragged us here if he just wanted to ignore his precious fight? I tried not to be annoyed with him, watching the fight with as much interest as I could muster.

Yusuke didn't bother to do the same. At one point the announcers started freaking out over an impressive roundhouse, but Yusuke just scoffed and muttered something that sounded suspiciously like he thought the move hadn't been that impressive. He got up from our hiding place and stalked in full view toward the beer garden door, not paying any attention to the way patrons had immediately begun to stare at us, the two interloping high schoolers.

"Yusuke!" I hissed after him, keeping my head down as best as I could. "Where are you going? There's still a few minutes—"

"Whatever." The word came out a harsh bark, all secrecy abandoned. "It's basically over, anyway."

The bouncers chased us out after that (but we'd done this before, so they didn't get too mad; they only grumbled and said they'd see us next week, mostly likely).

I didn't see Yusuke for nearly a week after the incident; he didn't stop by at our appointed meeting time, nor did he call to tell me where he'd gone. He stayed away for at least another week before eventually slinking in through the side door unannounced, plopping onto my bed while I did homework at my desk like some silent, brooding alley cat. ("That's Hiei's act; get your own," I wanted to snark, but I refrained.) Yusuke didn't bother greeting me. He stared at the ceiling without speaking after he flopped down, arms up behind his head as if he hadn't already sprawled out across my fluffy pillows.

For a while, neither of us spoke. I pretended to do homework, watching carefully for him to make any move toward the Famicon. But he didn't move for at least ten minutes, and my patience waned.

I set down my pen with gentle precision. "You good, Yusuke?"

"Never better." He didn't look at me. "Why?"

"You just seem a little bored."

"Nah." His face turned toward the wall. "I'm fine."

I waited a minute.

He neither moved nor spoke.

"You could play Dragon Quest," I suggested, perhaps audibly desperate. "Beat that last boss." A lame attempt at a joke followed. "About time he got what's coming to him, right?"

Yusuke continued to stare at the wall. "Maybe."

I waited another minute.

Still Yusuke neither moved nor spoke.

"Do you feel like we need to level-grind some more?" I asked to fill the strange, tense silence. "Get another weapon or two?"

"Not really," Yusuke said to the wall. "We're basically maxed out on levels, anyway."

"Then why are you hesitating?"

That finally earned me a look, one full of ire and dark-eyed fire. "Who says I am?"

"Me. I do." I spoke with intention, hoping not to trip the mounting pressure in Yusuke's tight gaze. "Because normally you're chomping at the bit to beat the final boss and hang a game on your wall like a trophy head, but now…"

"I'm just not in the mood, OK?"

"OK," I said, shrugging. "But you kind of haven't been in the mood for weeks, so…"

A muscle clenched in Yusuke's jaw. "Just leave it alone, Tex."

"But—"

"Leave it," he repeated, "alone."

When I didn't reply—rendered speechless by the way he'd spat those words between his clenched teeth—he turned to face the wall again.

For a few moments, I studied the back of his head and the way his hair fell in a soft fringe over his nape, untouched by his liberally applied pomade. Something in his demeanor didn't make sense to me. It wasn't like Yusuke to hold back, to be cautious, to show restraint in the face of something he wanted to do. He was a creature of id, in some very important ways, driven not by his conscious mind but by the unconscious desires of his lizard-brain, the evolutionary instinct to take advantage of opportunities as soon as they were presented. So why was he avoiding this game? Why was he avoiding something he knew he'd enjoy?

He hadn't waited to see the end of the championship match, either, as I recalled—and then the pieces clicked.

"You know, Yusuke." I turned back to my homework, filling in the answer to a problem and not daring to look at him even askance. "There will be more games."

The pillows rustled when he moved. "What're you yakkin' about?" he grumbled.

"Dragon Quest." Still I didn't look at him, eyes locked in place on a stubborn math equation. "We're on game four, but I know for a fact there will be at least 11 of them."

From the corner of my eye I saw him sit up, movement sharp and jerky. "Should you even be telling me that?" he asked in a low voice. "You said you wouldn't tell me about what's coming. Doesn't that break your rules?"

I shrugged. "Maybe not, but… I dunno." Pasting on a smile, I met his eyes and said, "Just because one thing ends doesn't mean there aren't other challenges to look forward to, I guess."

He didn't move. Neither did I. We exchanged a wordless look for nearly a minute in perfect silence—a silence in which much was communicated but nothing was said. A look Yusuke and I had shared before on different subjects, and one we shared then, too, until eventually he looked away.

After that, he moved. He stood and walked to the TV atop my bookshelf, where he booted up the Famicon and lay on the floor, controller held tightly in his hands. I turned back to my homework as the Dragon Quest IV title music played, notes humming tiny in my TV's tiny speakers. Yusuke played for a few minutes without speaking, buying potions and resting his RPG party before delving into the game's final and most treacherous dungeon. He navigated his way through it for a while, leaving me to my homework in peace… but soon I heard him shift. He cleared his throat, fingers clacking against the controller's keys.

"Hey, Tex?" he said as he triggered the final, long-awaited boss encounter.

"Yeah, Yusuke?" I said, scribbling the answer to another math problem.

"… thanks."

"Don't mention it." I smiled, but he had already looked away, dark eyes a touch lighter than before, pixels reflected bright in their dark, determined depths. "Just tell me when a cut scene plays so I can watch, OK?"

Yusuke grunted an affirmative—and we beat that game together, knowing there would be many more to come.

I ended up taking "maxed" and applying it to a video game ("maxed level"). Further connected that to Yusuke's feelings of restlessness after he beat Toguro (see anime episode 67), and brought in this collection's theme of secrets with NQK knowing the future of the DQ series (and also knowing Yusuke's secret feelings). Tried not to explain the emotions here too explicitly, but basically Yusuke feels like he's got nothing to do now that he's the strongest person alive (or so he assumes right now). He doesn't want to beat the game because once he does, what will he have to look forward to?

I've realized the prompt list I chose has some grammatical ticks that make it hard to use? Like they probably should've just used the word "max" as the prompt instead of the past-tense "maxed." Other prompts on the list were hard to use due to their part of speech/tense, which… can't really be helped, I guess, but I'll know better next year when I do another collection and have to pick a prompt list.

BIG THANKS to everyone who read the previous chapter! It went butter than expected (pun, didn't kill me) but I'm glad it's over LOL. Huge thanks to these gorgeous folks for their lovely comments: C S Stars, animebishieluver, Kaiya Azure, ladyofchaos, cezarina, xenocanaan, cestlavie, o-dragon, tammywammy9, LadyEllesmere, EasilyAmused93, RandomR15 and guests!