Chapter Text
The moon that lit the lines between them, the wind that drove the shadows back, and the birdsong that you couldn’t ignore -despite how truly annoying they were, here and now, Yuri had decided. He hated scattering flowers the most.
Just when things were getting good!
Synchro had been tantalisingly close, so much so that his nails were aching. He wanted to sink his nails in, deep enough to stain him red, until, finally, he could rip out chunks and swallow them whole!
To be so close, yet so interminably far, was agony.
Of course, even if they hadn’t been scattered, they couldn’t come together, yet. No, bound as Yuri was by his leash, he had to follow a certain process . Still, Yuri would have liked to hide him somewhere, tied up tight and nicely tamed. That way, at least, he’d be more accessible .
Instead, he’d been blown away, jostled about, and deposited in some filthy fountain!
Obviously, it was far from Yuri’s finest moment. His clothes were soaked, his hair was bedraggled, and his wonderful cape was now sopping wet. Thankfully, his one small mercy was the state of his deck. Despite the deluge it had witnessed, safe and sound inside his duel disk, it had managed to survive unscathed. Granted, if he stayed in the fountain like this, that could all too easily change. With that in mind, sighing, Yuri pulled himself up and looked about.
It took mere seconds for Yuri to place himself. After all, having walked this school for as long as he could remember, it would be hard to mistake any of its courtyards. Of course, even if the architecture hadn’t tipped him off, the behaviour of his fellow students would have made things clear. At first, their eyes bored into him, jet black and utterly unreadable. Then, just as quickly, they turned away, smoothly resuming their pointless chattering.
Dimly, Yuri knew that his cheeks ought to be burning. They didn’t, though, because Yuri wasn’t embarrassed.
No matter how humiliated he was, no one ever laughed. No matter how excellent he was, no one ever smiled. No matter how he screamed, no one ever looked at him.
Never in his life had Yuri been embarrassed.
***
Whenever Yuri walked through the halls, people would stare. True, it would only last an infinitesimal moment, but, regardless, they would stare.
With Yuri dripping wet as he was, he’d expected at least two infinitesimal moments -perhaps with some mildly widened eyes. Shockingly, though, he didn’t receive so much as one! Instead, as usual, he stalked through an ocean of mannequins, faceless, lifeless, and frozen in place.
Clearly, news of his arrival had spread throughout the school.
A pity.
Their surprise would have made for a good enough distraction. As it was, he couldn’t help but notice the shame rotting in his gut. Before you got things twisted, though, he wasn’t feeling shame over failing The Professor. Yuri knew much better than to wail over that!
( Now. )
Reasons, dreams, rationales, justice -whatever excuse whoever came up with, none of it was Yuri’s business. All that mattered was that he won .
From the moment he’d returned-
( Home )
-having left his prey behind, Yuri’s pride had been stained with failure.
Ah, I hope that I get redeployed soon.
His fingers were itching to card someone.
Sadly, as shameful as that dark stain was, there was nothing he could do about it. As always, The Professor held the cards. In the meantime, he'd just have to find some way to entertain himself.
Thankfully, crossing the threshold into his room quickly provided a distraction.
Most of the rooms in Academia were, in a word, ‘Spartan’. One door, one window, two beds, some shelves and drawers, and, finally, a closet. Each could house up to two different students and, despite the grinding minimalism, customisation was frowned upon.
Yuri’s, however, was a veritable forest of houseplants. Greenery and flowers covered every surface, while small clay pots hung from wall hooks and rails. Creepers, vines, and hanging plants filled the air with leaves. Sometimes, Yuri’d even walk into them!
His favourite set by far, though, was perched right in front of the windowsill.
Grinning wide, Yuri stepped towards them, dodging the vines with practised ease. “Hungry, are you?” he cooed, “Well, now! We can’t have that!”
***
Every morning, Rin woke up hoping today was the day she’d be saved in her sleep.
‘Course, Rin wasn’t stupid, so she knew that dream was impossible. Even so, she wanted to dream -so much that she could barely wake up! The instant that she opened her eyes, she’d be stuck inside that tower, again!
In the end, though, Rin couldn’t sleep forever, so, groaning, she swung to her feet, opened her eyes, and greeted that same brick ceiling again.
How many days does this make?
Annoyed, she stalked to the leftish wall of her prison (being a tower, it was way too round to really have sides). For what it was worth, she hadn’t been forced to start scraping a tally, yet. Instead, her cushy little sky-high prison cell came complete with a window and calendar!
Honestly, who do they think they’re kidding?!
Like some soft bed, calendar, window, and food was gonna make her accept her kidnapping! The total nerve set her blood on fire! Snatching up a bright green pen, she tore a line across the calendar.
Day 92.
She’d been gone for over three months.
Three months with no duelling, three months on a single wage, three months of rent, three months of bills, three months without the wind on her face, and three months without Yugo and his shitty, shitty headmate.
Instantly, all Rin’s fire died at once, drowned beneath a wave of worry. Sure, Rin was a prisoner, here, but at least she had food, water, shelter, and clothing. At best, Yugo’d be eating for shit. At worst, Wing’d gotten into his head, filling it with their awful ideas! What if he started scrapping again!? No! He just had to know better than that!
Grimacing, she threw herself back into bed face down, trying to push away all of her worries. If she started getting into them, she’d be stewing here for hours!
Worry, worry, sleep, and get bored.
Was this really what her life had come to?
Man, something, anything, come on and distract me!-
“Oh Rinriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin~!”
-Never mind! I take it back! Stooooop!
Sadly, far from getting out of her face, the door to her tower loudly swung open. The invader? Shitty Purple Yugo - or ‘Yuri’ as he was apparently called (A tragic mistake, in Rin’s opinion. Shitty Purple Yugo described him much better).
Stomach sinking, Rin sat up, fixing him with her fiercest glare.
“What do you want?” she seethed.
“Oh? Am I forbidden from visiting?” he pouted. “Say it isn’t so!”
“Fuck off.”
Smirking, he skipped up to her wall, carefully checking the corners and crevices. That was when she finally noticed …was he carrying a box of bugs !?
She stared. “Is that a box of bugs?”
“How observant!” he mocked, before plucking a spider straight off the wall. That alone was crazy but, Shitty Purple Yugo being Shitty Purple Yugo, he couldn’t leave it at just that. No, he had to grab it with his bare hands , too!
She gagged. “What is wrong with you?! Did you seriously come here just for bugs ?”
“Spiders are arachnids, actually. To answer your question, though,” he pouted, “maybe I just wanted company!”
“Yeah, right,” she rolled her eyes. “You’re after info, aren’t you?”
From the start, that’s all he’d ever wanted.
***
“Why does he like you?”
“ Like me?! He had you kidnap me!”
“Yes? You take things you like,” his eyes sharpened. “Now, why does he like you? What did you do to make him like you?”
“How should I know!? Ask him !”
“If you can’t pinpoint a reason, then just tell me everything,” he sighed. “In return, I will too.”
Rin scoffed, “What would you know-”
“-Time flows at the same rate through all four dimensions. All four use the same calendar, too.”
Well , Rin thought, stunned speechless. That’s definitely something !
Sure, she hated the way that Yuri’d pulled one over her. Even so, she couldn’t deny it. ‘What if every hour in Fusion equates to a whole damn year in Synchro? ‘What if she never saw Yugo again? Those doubts had always haunted her mind, but, thanks to Yuri, they’d been dismissed.
In that case, fair was only fair.
“He looks at me like Amiko did.”
“Who’s Amiko?”
“What’s the date?”
***
‘Course, that wasn’t to say he’d stayed the same. For one, back then, Shitty Purple Yugo had had human eyes. Right now, though, they were monstrous. It was like she was looking at Wing.
Sometimes, Rin wondered what’d happened to the Shitty Purple Yugo she could say she knew was human. Mostly, though, he wasn’t worth the brain-space.
“I saw Ruri outside again.”
There, now get lost already.
In reply, Yuri froze, fingers twitching above an angry spider.
Then, he sighed. “Yugo is well rested and fed. He smells hideous, but I believe it’s by design.”
-And, hearing it, Rin’s world stopped turning. Her brain was screaming ‘Don’t you dare trust him!’ but her racing heart was reaching for hope.
In the end, Rin chose emotion. Whether or not she came to regret it, for now, she’d hold this happiness close.
Knees shaking, she fell to the floor and cried.
***
Yuri enjoyed watching people cry. The stronger they were, the better. There was something so rewarding in making a mountain crumble. He savoured it like a connoisseur.
Rin’s tears, though, were tears of joy, so they did little to satisfy him.
Annoyed, he found the last of her unwanted guests, captured them, and returned to his room, now fully equipped with food for his plants. First, he fed his pitchers, before moving onto the sundews and mourning his lack of a rafflesia (too large, too pungent, and somehow harder to feed). Finally, he kept the largest, wriggliest morsels for his most impressive plant -his single Venus Flytrap.
See, normally flytraps have hundreds of heads. Yuri’s, however, had just one. Large, lime-green, and nearly so gorged it sagged to the ground, the gargantuan head could consume a whole rat -and demanded about as much sustenance. Careful, he snatched up his three largest spiders and flung them into its waiting jaws, watching, satisfied, as they closed around their struggling legs.
Initially, this head had been withered and brown, the smallest by far to grace this plant. For reasons even he didn’t know, the sight of its tiny, spindly form had evoked some pity from Yuri’s chest. Desperate, he had… talked to the thing.
In truth, he’d found the thought ridiculous. ‘Love’, ‘friendship’, ‘affection’, ‘care’ -to express such things was well beyond Yuri. After all, no matter how hard and long he cried, he’d never received those kinds of words.
Still, he’d tried.
Next morning, he found to his surprise that, aside from the head he’d spoken to, every leaf had withered up! Now, only one remained, an emerald in a sea of rot. Overnight, it had parasitised its brothers.
It would die before it could flower. Everyone would.
Even so, he admired its wisdom:
“Fight with all your strength, kill with all your heart, even in the face of complete annihilation, you have to live your life to the fullest.”
So although he couldn’t understand ‘love’, for them, he pretended.