The silence that followed his departure was heavy, suffocating, and absolute.
For nearly a full minute, no one moved. The artificial circus lights were gone, replaced by the mundane, fading afternoon sun filtering into the Youshow Duel School's backyard. The vibrant colors of Yuya's Performapals and Ryoho's towering D/D/D Doom King Armageddons had vanished into thin air, but the crushing weight of the duel's reality remained entirely intact.
"Akaba..."
The name left Yuzu's lips as barely a whisper, breaking the paralysis gripping the room. She looked at the empty doorway, her hands still tightly gripping her skirt. "He's... he's related to Reiji Akaba? A member of the Leo Corporation's founding family? To the Chairwoman, Himika Akaba?"
"Ryoho Akaba," Gongenzaka spat out the name, his voice thick with a mixture of anger and profound disbelief. He slammed his fist against the railing of the viewing platform, the metal rattling under the force. "He played us for fools from the very beginning! A spy sent directly from the heart of LDS to observe Yuya, to pluck the secrets of Pendulum Summoning right out of his hands!"
"But he said he didn't steal it," Tatsuya noted quietly, his voice trembling as he looked down at his own deck. "He said LDS was already tracking the energy data every time Yuya used the Pendulum..."
"It doesn't matter." Shuzo said, a profound calmness of an adult. "Things like this always happens when something the world has never seen comes. Everyone wants to have it, use it, rule it. It's craze never ends until everyone has it."
Sora didn't join in the panic. He simply stared at the door where Ryoho had exited, lazily biting down on the plastic stick of his finished lollipop. "A body that works inhumanly, huh?" He thought, recalling Reiji's words over the comms. "And those calculated moves... Ryoho Akaba. You're definitely not just some corporate heir."
Down on the center floor, Yuya still hadn't stood up completely. He remained on one knee, his hand resting flat against the floor where his Duel Disk had just powered down. His life points had been saved at "25."
A very fitting example of "being saved by hair." By a sudden interruption, but mentally, the counter had hit plain zero.
"Yuya..." Yuzu ran down the steps, her boots clicking sharply against the floor. She knelt beside him, reaching out a hand but hesitating to touch his shoulder. "Yuya, look at me. Are you okay? Don't worry top much. You dueled great! You even managed to destroy his fusion and xyz monster for once."
"It wasn't just xyz and fusion. I am pretty sure he even had synchro as well. But he didn't used it. As if he felt there was no need to use it against me." He said in low voice.
"Even synchro? He have mastered all three summoning methods?" Everyone were at disbelief but they couldn't reject the possibility.
Yuya slowly pulled his goggles back down over his eyes, hiding his face from the world. When he spoke, his voice lacked any of its usual theatrical warmth or bounce. It was completely hollow.
"He was right," Yuya whispered.
"What?" Gongenzaka stepped up beside them, his massive frame casting a long shadow over his friend. "Don't listen to a word that traitor said, Yuya! He used a cowardly survival tactic and cards to push you into a corner!"
"No, Gongenzaka, he was right." Yuya repeated, his shoulders shaking slightly as he finally stood up, though his head remained bowed. "I thought I created a miracle. I thought the Pendulum belonged to me and my dad's memory. But I just unlocked a door. I left it wide open, and the world is already walking right past me. The whole world is going to be using Pendulum Summoning soon, if What Ryo said is true. And if I can't even bring smile to someone who duels without smile... how am I supposed to bring smiles to anyone's face?"
Without waiting for a response, Yuya turned and walked toward the boys' locker room, his steps heavy and slow. The remaining Youshow students watched him go, the initial shock of the duel fading into a grim, uncertain anxiety about the shadow Leo Corporation had just cast over their horizon.
The heavy locker room door clicked shut behind Yuya, sealing him inside a stark, unmoving quiet. He didn't turn on the lights. He just slid down against the metal lockers, letting his head drop back against the cold steel with a dull thud. The weight of his deck felt like a lead brick in his pocket. "D/D/D..." The names echoed in his mind, dark, heavy, and absolute. Ryoho Akaba hadn't just played a game; he had executed a flawless mathematical equation where Yuya's defeat was the only logical conclusion, absolute certainty.
Outside, the silence in the backyard finally ruptured into frantic chatter.
"We can't just let them walk away with this!" Shuzo paced back and forth, his face practically glowing red. "A copyright! A patent?! You can't patent a dueling miracle! I'm going to the Leo Corporation headquarters myself! I'll demand to speak with the Chairwoman!"
"Dad, calm down!" Yuzu pleaded, crossing her arms tightly to stop her own hands from shaking. "Going there furious won't change anything. Did you see Reiji Akaba's face on that screen? He didn't look like a thief who got caught. He looked like a scientist who just finished a successful lab experiment. To them, this was just... new collection. And legally, it seems no rule breaking, but just unfair."
Gongenzaka stood entirely rigid, his arms locked across his chest. "What hurts the most is the deception. Ryo—no! Ryoho sat at our table. Ate with us. Talked with us. He watched Yuya duel. He pretended to be an outsider looking in, all while holding a hand of cards that could shatter the very fabric of how we understand dueling. What absolute nerve..."
"But did you guys see how he jumped?" Futoshi asked, his usual talk of 'shivers' completely absent, replaced by genuine awe. "From that high up, he didn't even blink. He jumped from one to other and landed like it was nothing."
Ayu also noded. "Even Yuya-niichan would have hard time doing something like this, even with practice, probably..."
"And his Life Points were at zero." Tatsuya added, his voice small and analytical. "He was technically dead in the duel. 'Fusion Relay' anchored his life to that monster. Since his life points were already zero, he had no risk to lose any life points anymore from the Dark Contract cards. Yet he acted like he is doing Yuya a favour. He played a strategy that required him to lose everything just to become invincible. Who does that?"
"Someone who doesn't care about the show," Sora chimed in, tossing his empty lollipop stick into a nearby bin with a clean flick. He leaned against the wall, his eyes narrowing slightly as he looked toward the exit Ryo had used. "Most duelists want to win with style, or they want to prove their deck is the best, or how their strategy and thinking is supirior. Ryo? He just wanted to see what would happen if he pushed the system to its limit. He wasn't even mad when the call interrupted him. It was just... 'Time's up, shifting to the next task.' like he didn't cared if the duel wasn't ended in his win. Because he knew the victorious is him."
"But that is just a more unforgivable thing!" Gongenzaka said. "To not take a duel seriously."
"If he had, Yuya wouldn't even had gone that far." Sora explained. "Plus, he didn't seemed frustrated when he had to go mid-duel. But he seemed unsettled. As if he had gone off a duel before as well."
Yuzu looked toward the locker room door, a crushing weight settling into her stomach. She remembered what Ryo had said right before he left: "Thanks for telling me this the other day, Yuzu." A cold realization washed over her. The casual conversations they'd had, the small details she had shared about Yuya's pendulum cards, how they worked, how Yuya felt when he drew them—Ryo hadn't just been making polite conversation. He had been cross-referencing her words with LDS's energy readouts. She had unwittingly handed him the final pieces of the puzzle. Tears of frustration pricked the corners of her eyes, but she bit her lip and forced them back. "No. I'm not going to cry. If Yuya is in there breaking down, I have to be the strong one."
"It won't get solved like this." Shuzo muttered. Going into locker room.
Inside the dark locker room, Yuya slowly pulled his deck out of his Duel Disk. He spread the cards across his lap in the dim light filtering through the high window. "Performapal Sleight Hand Magician. Odd-Eyes Pendulum Dragon."
"A tiny, safe backyard..." Yuya whispered, repeating Ryoho's biting words. He recalled the terrifying sight of the "D/D/D Doom King Armageddons" scaling up to 6000 attack points, a wall of pure, unyielding power that made his entertainment dueling look like shiny and glorious giant house, but made from fragile glass. Ryo hadn't just beaten him; he had exposed the flaws in his philosophy. Entertainment dueling required an audience, a stage, and a certain level of cooperation from the opponent to keep the "show" going. But in a real battle against someone who calculated every microsecond to survive, the show was just a liability.
Yuya gripped his "Odd-Eyes" card tightly, his knuckles turning white. "I'm not giving up," he muttered fiercely to the empty room, though his voice cracked. "You can mass-produce the cards, Ryo. You can put them in every store in Maiami City. But you can't mass-produce the heart and smile behind them. My dad's dueling wasn't just about the rules... it was about making people happy. Making the time they gave far more than worthwhile." He stood up, shoving the deck back into his pocket, and stared at his reflection in the mirror above the sinks. His face was pale, his eyes wide and tired under his goggles, but a tiny, stubborn spark was beginning to relight in his chest. He shoved his goggles up again. If the door to the Pendulum summon was wide open for the whole world to walk through, then he would just have to run, faster than anyone else.
"Yuya!" Shuzo came bursting the door. He grabbed Yuya by hand and crawled him outside to lessen him about Yusho. About when he made Entertainment Dueling and it got famous, people started to copy it, but Yusho just made his Dueling more great and fascinating that people just always put him on their personal favorite lists. Then Shuzo challenged Yuya for a duel.
...
The slick, black limousine cut through the streets of Miami City like a raven, its tinted windows completely isolating its passengers from the bustling afternoon traffic outside. Inside the cabin, the atmosphere was thick with a tense, clinical silence.
Ryoho sat perfectly straight on the leather seat, his black jacket discarded beside him. His t-shirt sleeves were rolled up, revealing the sleek, glowing biometric bands strapped tightly around both of his forearms—devices monitoring his pulse, neural activity, and cellular strain. Across from him sat Reiji Akaba, calmly adjusting his glasses while studying a tablet that flickered with rapid streams of real-time data.
"Your heart rate spiked to abnormal parameters during the duel, Ryo." Reiji stated, his tone devoid of fraternal warmth, treating the matter like a laboratory report. "The neural feedback from the prototype Pendulum cards might have been interacting with your specific physiological condition. Perhaps, if the signaled to abort hadn't come, you would have triggered a systemic relapse right there on the field more longer."
"This doesn't matter right now." Himika cut the explanation. "Marco has suddenly disappeared. And the last coordinates says that there was Xyz energy. A very strong and far wider than a person can release."
"That means it was that guy." Ryo said.
"I also think that." Himika said. "Nakajima have already informed me about all things that happened while I was away. Seems like we sure have made enemies more than just one dimension. But why?"
"I already know for sure. And so does Reiji." Ryo gestured to Reiji.
"Yes. It is more than just hypnotisis. It seems fact."
"You mean..."
"Yes. Perhaps that person is from Xyz Dimension." Reiji's eyes behind his glasses became angry. His blood vessels over his eyes inflamed. "That man have already started his work. Perhaps we are already late to find the coordinates of Xyz dimension." His clashed both his hands with force. "Maybe the time for our side is next. We have to move more fast than we had until now. And even after three years, we still have high value assets other than Pendulum."
"But with Pendulum, there is a more to it beyond the basic rule about Pendulam summon." Ryo said.
"Yeah, I had already thought about it. But it will take time to made more cards."
"Don't worry, Reiji. Ryo said, looking at Reiji, eye to eye. "The working of dimensional circuit and network is almost complete. It will be whole around the time of Maiami championship. We have to wait until then. I already knew the coordinates for Fusion Dimension. But not any other. Perhaps—no, we will get those by this Xyz user. But Synchro remains mystery even now."
"We don't know if Synchro Dimension exists or not." Himika chimed in. "And even if it does than we don't know we can make allies with it or if they will backstab us."
"Theoretically, it exists. It has to be." Ryo explained. "But we can't find yet. If we somehow get the energy coordinates and radiation traces from a Synchro summon from a person of Synchro Dimension, than we can try. At least we will know how the needle looks like in the bush. Until now we didn't even know if the needle is sharp or thin. But with getting numbers, traces and coordinates, it changes and affects the search drastically.
"We are trying to find Xyz Dimension by same way. With the energy that Xyz user is releasing whenever he Xyz summons. It makes us close, even if he doesn't give us path toward Xyz Dimension directly. But it surely will save time if he does."
"Guess, this is settled for now... at least for now." Himika gave deep sigh. Before her smile returned. "Well, I was gonna tell you two first as I had returned, but things came between, but now it is perfect time."
Reiji and Ryo's focus moved.
Ryo tucked his black jacket over his black t-shirt.
"There is a person I have find. Rather than find, I just learned about him and brought him here on my way to Maiami. He will be of great assist, a pity they didn't had more of people like him—no, calling him even 'him' is wrong. The perfect and fitting defination is 'it.'"
Reiji and Ryo had unknown hunch. They knew at least their mother wouldn't do anything or take anything meaningless and useless. And with her high but mysterious talk about that certain "it" made them wanting to know themselves rather asking from her.
And they will find their answers when they reach the Leo Corporation headquarters.