7.
Jonouchi ran and caught up with Aki on the way to school one day. Anzu and Yuugi were walking, chatting, several feet ahead.
"So, what kind of porn do you like?" Jonouchi asked conversationally. Aki's eyes widened.
"... Excuse me?"
"You know. What gets you off?" Jonouchi leaned toward Aki and pointed ahead. "Is it either of those girls?" he whispered.
Aki's eyebrows rose skeptically. "This conversation makes me uncomfortable," he announced.
"What? It's natural!" said Jonouchi. "All guys do i -"
"What the hell are you two talking about back there? Come look at this!" Anzu called, hands to her mouth, from up ahead. Aki gave Jonouchi one last exasperated look, and then they hurried forward to meet up with Anzu and Yuugi. "There's a television van parked outside the school." Anzu pointed.
Sure enough, there stood the van, parked in front of the gates.
"I would think there's some sort of celebrity coming to our school," said Yuugi skeptically, "but Seto's pretty big news. You'd think if a TV van were going to be here, it would have come for him."
Then she scampered over, stood on her tiptoes, and peeked inside the van. "It's a one-way window," she said matter of factly. "All black. I can't see anything."
Aki sighed. "Yuugi," he said, pained, "you really do need to be more careful."
"What?" Yuugi grinned, and she and her friends headed past the van and toward school. The director's assistant saw them, and his eyes caught on the tiny, blindingly beautiful girl with rainbow shots in her French braid of black hair.
He held up his camera and touched the button, capturing her face. Click.
"What if there is a celebrity coming to our school, though, in disguise?" said Jonouchi intently. "Can you imagine unmasking her? I could make a killing taking photos of her naked!" He grinned.
"That's called illegal," said Anzu flatly. "Once again, Jonouchi, you prove you're a terrible human being."
"Hey!"
"Actually, she's right," said Aki, deadpan, and he looked smooth and unfazed when Jonouchi gave him a betrayed look.
"... Are you all just going to congregate every morning right beside my school desk?" They looked around to find Seto sitting there, glaring up at them from his book.
"Hey! We're allowed to 'congregate' anywhere we want, asshole!" Jonouchi snapped.
Seto smirked. "Do you even know what 'congregate' means?" Jonouchi was silent. "Thought not."
"We've placed our desks right next to each other," said Yuugi, smiling uneasily, before Jonouchi could get any angrier. "It's just more convenient." Seto made an irritated sound, but said nothing. "Besides, aren't you curious about whether or not there's a celebrity around here?"
"If there was, I would have heard about it," said Seto simply. "There is nothing."
The assistant director stole a uniform from the locker rooms and lurked around the hallways, waiting for her to show. He'd shown somebody her picture and they'd pointed him in the right direction, telling him her name.
He needed to get off somehow. Assistants didn't exactly get laid very often.
At last, she showed up with a group of people - a brown-haired girl, a blond guy, a wild haired guy, and Kaiba Seto, of all people, who was trailing somewhat unwillingly behind and pretending not to notice or care about anybody else.
"Hey! Yuugi!" Yuugi and her friends looked around and paused as the assistant director came up, smiling eagerly.
"Do I know you?" Yuugi asked curiously.
"No, I just - I heard you talking about the celebrity on campus. I have the inside intel. I could get you in, if you wanted."
"Great! Me and my friends can -!" Yuugi began brightly.
"Uh, actually." He coughed uncomfortably. "I was thinking it could be - just you and me?"
Yuugi's eyes grew canny. The wild-haired kid's had narrowed in suspicion; Kaiba Seto had raised a skeptical eyebrow; the other two were glaring. "Look," she said delicately, "I'm not interested in any sort of… romantic attachment. Okay? I've sort of sworn off going to strange places with anybody I don't know very well," she added darkly, thinking of Ushio.
The assistant director glared at her as she and her friends walked away.
Over the following days, he tried to play his revenge by paying people to ask her to come out behind the school building. She could be the kid, he thought, who was beaten up on camera for their bullying segment.
But nobody could get Yuugi to leave the safety of her classroom and her friends.
At last, the director got impatient with his assistant. "I'm tired of waiting and listening to your excuses!" he shouted into the guy's face. "We're picking somebody else!"
In the end, they picked a skinny little bespectacled comic book nerd named Hanasaki. He was tricked behind the school building and beaten up by the assistant director for the camera.
Yuugi and her friends saw the footage on TV the next day and sobered, recognizing the assailant. "That could have been me," she realized.
Aki knew he had to act. It was time for another Shadow Game.
The next day, the assistant director was found in his own home, with the exact same blood and bruise pattern as Hanasaki's plus a wound in his groin.
Aki did not take kindly to people who threatened Yuugi. They infuriated him in rather vicious ways.