Chapter 158: Beautiful Girl Kikawayu?
"What's wrong, Rei?"
Kikawayu had held the warm glass of water out to Amano Rei, but Amano had not moved to take it. He just stared. Kikawayu tilted their head.
It was not that Amano refused to move. It was that Amano did not dare.
Just who are you?
No matter how much the person in front of him looked like Kikawayu, there was one rather fundamental difference from the Kikawayu he had grown up with.
Since when does my best friend have a figure like that?
"Are you actually Kikawayu?"
Kikawayu set down the glass and reached over to press the back of a hand against Amano's forehead.
"That's strange. No fever. So why are you talking nonsense?"
Being touched on the forehead by an unfamiliar beautiful girl while lying in bed was enough to make even Amano, who considered himself reasonably composed in most situations, feel a little self-conscious.
"Oh, maybe you do have a fever after all. You're a little warm now. You should lie back down. You really need to rest."
"Big brother, you're awake!"
Amano Shio must have caught the sounds of conversation through the door, because she kicked it open and charged in.
"Shio?" Seeing his familiar little sister helped the inexplicable tension inside Amano ease, just slightly.
"Kikawayu, why don't you go rest for a bit? You've been up all night. I can take over watching him."
"I'm fine, I'm not tired. Shio, keep your voice down a little. Rei still needs to rest."
"Mm, okay!" Shio dutifully pressed both hands over her own mouth.
Watching that reaction, Amano noticed something: Shio had not picked up on anything unusual about Kikawayu at all.
Which made him start to wonder.
Was he the one seeing things wrong?
Developing a hallucination where his childhood best friend looked like a beautiful girl. Had the Nanki'in clan actually been right about him? Was he really that suppressed?
But no. No, wait.
This was not the kind of thing that could be hand-waved away with vague explanations about repression or wishful thinking.
From every angle, at this precise moment, Kikawayu was a completely, unambiguously, thoroughly gorgeous girl.
And certain aspects of the visual were, to put it plainly, enough to make even Eve look underdeveloped by comparison.
If this qualified as a best friend, then what did that make Eve?
It looked too real to be a hallucination. Amano decided to test it himself.
If this was an illusion, physically reaching out and touching it should dispel it. That was how these things worked.
So Amano reached out.
The expression on Kikawayu's face, however, was nothing like the righteous indignation a girl would normally produce in that situation. Instead it was the same composed, easy smile that had been there since they were children, the face Kikawayu made whenever they were messing around and things got physical.
"Taking advantage of being sick to try something like that? You think I won't hit you back, Zero?"
Kikawayu pinned Amano flat against the mattress and returned the favor with interest.
Under ordinary circumstances, Amano would not have cared at all.
Under current circumstances, being pinned to the bed felt disconcertingly like being roughhoused by a beautiful girl.
"Okay, I surrender. I give, Kikawayu, stop."
"You surrendered fast today. You really must be exhausted."
Kikawayu let go, looking slightly unsatisfied with the brevity of the exchange.
Shio shook her head. "You two. I know you're close, but could you please stop putting on these performances in front of me? It is going to corrupt my innocent mind. I refuse to become the kind of girl who enjoys that sort of thing."
So even after Amano had physically reached out and touched Kikawayu, Shio had interpreted the entire thing as two boys roughhousing. Same as always.
Which meant he was the odd one out here.
Had a Dark Game actually done something to his brain?
The thought of Dark Games made him suddenly remember what the Soulswindler had said to him the night of that duel.
"Then try to tell the difference between my lies and my truths. Your friend Kikawayu is not a man. He is a girl who loves you deeply."
[Kikawayu] [Affection: 100 - Undying Devotion]
Truth or lie.
Amano had initially decided he had seen through the Soulswindler's trick in an instant. But if the Soulswindler was more clever than that: wrapping an unbelievable truth in the packaging of an obvious lie, knowing Amano would refuse to believe precisely because it was the Soulswindler saying it.
The moment I think you are definitely lying, and you are not: that too is a form of deception.
He could not tell. He genuinely could not tell.
"Rei, are you really okay? Did I hit you too hard just now?"
Seeing the look on Amano's face, Kikawayu's composure softened into something closer to concern.
"It's not your fault, Kikawayu. I think I've just been running myself down. Let me rest alone for a bit."
"Alone? All right. But if you feel worse at all, call me."
Kikawayu was still visibly reluctant, but since Amano had asked directly, there was no pressing reason to stay. After refilling the glass of water, offering several reminders, and checking once more that Amano was truly all right, Kikawayu quietly stepped out and pulled the door shut.
Amano lay still and stared at the ceiling.
He must have been more unwell than he thought, because he had just detected what could only be described as a faint domestic warmth radiating from his best friend, and that was not a sensation he had ever experienced before.
In their shared room next door, Kikawayu spoke quietly.
"Yubel. Rei's been acting a little strange today. Are you sure the concealment isn't showing cracks?"
Yubel's voice came back level and certain. "There are no cracks. Phantom concealment has no theoretical blind spots."
"Can you track the dark duelists who fought Zero?"
"Every dark duelist who engaged Amano Rei last night was eliminated without leaving a trace. Tracking is not what I do well. Investigation belongs to the humans with actual power and resources. Leave it to them."
Meanwhile, in his own room, Amano sat on the edge of his bed and stared at the floor.
The Kikawayu situation was beyond his current ability to resolve. Whether it was connected to the Soulswindler or to the strange dream he had last night, he could not determine. The dream itself was already hazy and indistinct. He could only recall one line Eve had said to him inside it.
"Perhaps from here on, you will be able to see certain truths that were hidden from you before."
It was an odd dream, nothing more. It did not constitute decisive evidence either way.
But thinking about the Soulswindler reminded him of the Soul Binder.
He opened his Eva Terminal.
There was indeed one unclaimed card waiting.
[Earthbound God Scarlet Nova]
[DARK / Fiend / Effect]
[Only 1 "Earthbound God" monster can be face-up on the field. Once per turn, during your Main Phase or your opponent's Main Phase: You can banish this card from your hand or Graveyard; send 1 "Earthbound God" monster or "Scar-Red" monster from your hand or field to the Graveyard, then apply 1 of the following effects: Special Summon 1 "Earthbound God" monster from your deck or Extra Deck. Special Summon 1 "Scar-Red" monster from your Extra Deck.]
This was the only card that could bridge the Earthbound God mythology with the legend of the Burning Soul.
If every professional identity the system recorded corresponded to a card, then what card had the Puppeteer left behind? The Shaddoll cards Finesse had mentioned once, perhaps?
That question was, in any case, what concerned Amano most. What was the current situation with the Puppeteer's organization and its dark duelists?
He reached for his VSN and contacted Finesse immediately.
Her reply came back quickly.
After the two Dark Games last night, five of the six individuals previously flagged as suspicious targets had shown corresponding incidents. Two in particular stood out.
Richter Soren, eldest son of the Soren Construction Group, had gone missing the previous night with his whereabouts unknown.
Sakuraba Nao, daughter of the Sakuraba Pharmaceutical family, had fallen into an unexplained coma that same night, with no medical cause yet identified.
Both families held significant influence within Eden Tower.
If the Wein family had been working alone, even with advance warning they would never have obtained this quality of intelligence on key figures in those families this quickly. But the moment the Nanki'in family had agreed to stand alongside them last night, everything changed. A combined intelligence network spanning both legitimate channels and less official ones covered the entire mid-district with essentially no gaps. Nothing any major family did could escape those two pairs of eyes.
As for Kaiba Corporation: Finesse had raised the dark duelist situation with Kaiba Chiaki directly.
Chiaki's response had been remarkably consistent with how Kaiba Seto would have reacted in the anime.
Dark Games, real ones? That sort of thing doesn't exist. Superstitious nonsense. The Kaiba family did not believe in it.
As for the destruction last night's duels had caused across the mid-district, Chiaki attributed it entirely to the raw power of the cards themselves.
Three thousand years on, the Kaiba family was still a devoted congregation in the church of scientific materialism.
Returning to the two dark duelists defeated in last night's games: going by gender, the missing Richter Soren most likely corresponded to the Soul Binder. The unconscious Sakuraba Nao was presumably the Soulswindler.
Curious about what the Soulswindler actually looked like, Amano ran a search on the Eva Network. Corporate heirs always had more publicly available information than ordinary students.
As it turned out, though he had been operating inside Rin Seiya's body for that duel rather than his own, the Soulswindler's actual identity was a girl who looked vibrant and full of energy in her photos.
Wealthy, and pretty on top of it. Why would someone like that choose to become a dark duelist?
Amano genuinely could not understand it.
Two of the six suspected individuals had suffered incidents corresponding to their defeats in Dark Games. That still left no direct evidence that the remaining four were dark duelists as well. To avoid alerting them too soon, the Wein and Nanki'in families settled on the most straightforward approach available: surveillance. Monitor every movement of the remaining four suspects around the clock. If any of them showed signs of initiating a Dark Game, move to neutralize immediately.
Whether "neutralize immediately" could realistically mean anything more direct than interference within Eden Tower's rules was debatable. But even short of that, the combined duelist assets both families assigned to surveillance detail would serve as enough of a deterrent to prevent the suspects from openly starting Dark Games without serious risk to themselves.
At minimum, it would keep the mid-district somewhat quieter for the time being.
There was, however, one complication.
One of the four targets had already disappeared before surveillance could begin.
Not exactly disappeared. More precisely: never found in the first place.
Unlike the other three, whose backgrounds were tied to major corporations and established families, this one was simply a student with no significant connections.
Though calling her entirely ordinary would not be quite accurate either.
Currently ranked tenth among Xyz Academy's active duelists: Kuroshio Nagi.
She had originally been ranked eleventh, but after Kaiba Chiha's defeat against Amano had stripped her of her ranking points, Kuroshio Nagi had moved up into the top ten.
Unlike the other family heirs, the searchable information available on Kuroshio Nagi was almost nothing. No photos. No deck information. No duel records. Just a single line identifying her as a second-year student at the Duel Academy.
Second year, already inside the top ten. That was frightening in its own right.
The other detail that caught Amano's attention in what little he could find was a description of Kuroshio Nagi as "the most unusual Xyz duelist, a girl who commands the power of consumption."
Power of consumption.
That did not sound like a pleasant phrase. It had the particular quality of something that belonged to a Dark Game.
Still, one small disappearance was not enough to disrupt what turned out to be a genuinely peaceful weekend.
Kikawayu and Shio put him under effective house arrest inside the dorm: no leaving the room, no exceptions. After the weeks of relentless dueling and Dark Games, Amano found himself unexpectedly unsure how to handle actual rest.
The visitors helped.
Finesse came by, naturally. She lived in the same dorm building, and the time she spent at Amano's side over the weekend ended up rivaling Kikawayu's.
Rin Seiya came as well. She was technically still recovering herself, but she showed up carrying a bag of snacks from the convenience store and said it was to return the favor from when Amano had visited her.
She had not, for the record, bought anything else at the convenience store that day, though the thought had apparently crossed her mind.
Nanki'in Sakuya arrived as class representative, officially on behalf of all students in Class 1-E. According to Sakuya, her classmates were worried about Amano and wanted him to recover quickly so his academic progress would not be disrupted.
The unstated priority, it was broadly understood, was his availability to lend out his homework.
Even Kaiba Chiaki showed up. Her get-well gift was a card: Call of the Haunted.
[Call of the Haunted]
[Trap Card]
[Target 1 monster in your Graveyard; Special Summon it in Attack Position. When this card leaves the field, destroy that monster. When that monster is destroyed, destroy this card.]
He understood the effect perfectly well: Special Summon a monster from the Graveyard. Amano could roughly guess that Chiaki intended some message about bouncing back and getting on his feet faster. It still gave him a faint chill.
On her way out, Chiaki reminded him about the Duel Chronicle the following week, and told him not to forget to bring her along.
No Dark Games. No complicated social disasters. A rare, unambiguous weekend of rest, passing quietly in an atmosphere of almost suspicious calm.
The only thing that managed to genuinely surprise Amano over those two days:
[Kaiba Chiha] [Affection +11] [Affection: 51]
Kaiba Chiha's affection had turned positive.
He was not entirely sure whether to be relieved or alarmed.
The relief: he would presumably stop being on the receiving end of targeted hostility.
The alarm: what on earth could have happened to raise Kaiba Chiha's affection this significantly without the two of them having exchanged so much as a word?
The more he thought about it, the more unsettling it became.
Monday morning. Amano headed out to lead the class for morning drills.
He walked past Kikawayu's door and paused.
He did not kick it this time.
Two full days had gone by. Kikawayu still had not changed back.
Or rather: perhaps what had not changed back was his own perception.
The image of Kikawayu in his eyes remained exactly the same. An absurdly cute girl.
Kikawayu's attitude toward him was entirely unchanged from usual. But something about being around Kikawayu felt off now, a subtle discomfort that had not been there before. Even something as ordinary as the two of them sitting together on the dorm sofa with nothing to do, leaning against each other the way they always had, now produced an acute awareness of warmth and a faint personal scent that had no business being there.
He could not bring himself to actually say anything to Kikawayu about it. Admitting that he was hallucinating his best friend as a beautiful girl was too embarrassing to put into words.
It was not interfering with daily life, anyway. He would just deal with it. He could only hope whatever had gotten into his head would sort itself out on its own before long.
He rode his D-Wheel toward Synchro Academy. The mid-district in the early morning was quiet: few people moved through the streets at the hour when hard-style educational conditioning typically had teenagers still asleep.
Amano, however, noticed someone who had managed it.
She was hard to miss.
A girl crouched alone in an alley off the side of the road, smoking, dressed in an elaborate black aesthetic that leaned toward the theatrical. Blonde hair. A bandage strip covering her left eye.
Hiding in a back alley to smoke first thing in the morning?
In Amano's mental catalogue, this type had a few possible labels. A punk. A delinquent. One of those aggressively chaotic girls who presented as reckless and bit the hardest when cornered.
He had no interest in making contact. She might look cute, but that was exactly the type that did the most damage when she decided she did not like you.
Better to accelerate past and let it go.
He was already throttling up when the girl seemed to notice him watching.
And then the system chime sounded.
A target the system had not flagged for a long time.
[New Affectable Target Discovered]
[Kuroshio Nagi] [Affection: 55]
****
50+advance chapters at patreon.com/Eatinpieces