his guard and his goaler
4.
He was lucky Yuusaku never asked to visit, considering where their first meeting had left off. He was lucky Yuusaku was the sort who kept others out of his own problems and goals. He was lucky Yuusaku didn't ask for help or even ask where his parents were (and he returned the favour by not asking why Yuusaku suddenly moved out of home as soon as he was old enough to legally live alone).
No-one seemed to care that Ryoken had been effectively alone for several years by that point, but since he wasn't technically alone, it didn't matter. He could handle things, anyway. There were plenty of takeaway places in Den City. All manner of learning material was available online, including the basics of hacking. And it didn't take long before he could put himself down for home-schooling and get away with it despite lacking technical parental consent. It didn't take long before he could start piercing things together, before he started getting the hang of hacking, before he started finding traces of his father and his father's coworkers on the web.
It took a few years before he assembled them again, and in the meantime watched Yuusaku battle his own demons in his own way. He didn't tell much, or ask much, or else the entire charade would come down on them. So he was simply a semi-frequent presence. They'd eat burgers together, or hot dogs. They'd talk about duelling because that was the only common ground Yuusaku knew he shared. It wasn't much of a friendship in the end. They talked occasionally. Ate out occasionally. Went about their own lives otherwise and kept secrets from each other. And yet it was nice to be able to get out of the house, away from hacking and conspiracies (and right into the lap of someone he couldn't talk to about such things, and was thus forced to fish for other topics). And maybe for Yuusaku too… Maybe that was why he moved out of home, because his parents, the counsellors, everyone who knew him treated him like glass…
And then there was Ryoken, who ignored the elephant in the room because what else could he do?