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kuriboo · 3 years

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Hugsaku 2021

Day 4 - Family | “I can’t remember my parents’ faces.” | “I’m used to being alone, so it’s fine.”

This is part of a continuous story I’ve been writing for hugsaku. You can find previous parts either in my previous hugsaku posts or on ao3. The general story is: Yusaku ends up in Heartland with no idea how he got there, and Yuma decides to help Yusaku figure out how to get home. I’ll post a link to the ao3 in the notes.

Yuma and Yusaku are very interesting for this case, since their family situations are sort of the opposite of each other.

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Yusaku kicked a rock lightly as he walked down the path behind Yuma, his hands in his pockets. Over the past few days, Yuma had been giving Yusaku a casual tour of the city while they kept an eye out for Numbers.

“Oh, there’s some litterbots.” Yuma pointed over to their left at a group of robots picking garbage up from the ground. “They’re these robots that go around the city and pick up garbage people have dropped. I’m not really a big fan of them, though. They keep thinking I’m garbage and they’ll pick me up and… It’s gross.”

Yusaku shrugged. “The robots would know better than me.”

“Hey, come on, you're supposed to be on my side!” Yuma protested.

Yusaku looked away, now staring at the litterbots. He could just barely hear them talking as they did their duty. They didn’t look like anything he’d seen in Den City, but something about them reminded him of…

“Are you listening to me? Hey, uh, are you okay?” Yuma looked up at Yusaku’s face with a frown. Then he followed Yusaku’s gaze to the litterbots. “Do you have those where you’re from, too?”

“No.” Yusaku paused for a moment “I’m probably just homesick or something. For some reason, those litterbots remind me of Roboppy.”

“Who’s Roboppy?”

“They’re a little cleaning robot I have. They’re very common around the city I live in. I built my Roboppy myself and edited their programming to give them a bit of a personality.”

“Whoa, that’s really cool! You gotta be really smart to do something like that.” Yuma frowned. “Do you miss Roboppy?”

“...I don’t know.” That was difficult to figure out. “It’s not like I wish they were here, but… Every day, after I came home, Roboppy would greet me. They’d be happy to see me. I’ve been so used to it that I never gave it a second thought until I ended up here and haven’t been able to see them. I think I just...miss that part of my routine.”

“Hmm. I could say hi to you whenever you come home.”

“I only leave the house when I’m with you, so that wouldn’t make any sense.” Yusaku rolled his eyes. “Besides, you’re not Roboppy.”

Yuma opened his mouth to respond, but he was interrupted. That’s when they spotted the first person with a Number Yusaku had seen since he met Yuma.

Their eyes glowed red, and there was a strange glow around the rest of their body.

“Numbers amplify the darkest desires of their host,” Astral explained quietly to Yusaku while Yuma loudly confronted the other person. “When they possess you, they block out everything else. When you resisted the Number you held, that’s what you overcame. It seems most humans cannot.”

Yusaku looked at Astral with a frown.

He could tell that Number he’d had was powerful when he held it. He’d wanted to keep it, even without knowing if it would work well with his deck or any of his cards at all. But the card seemed like it could’ve been a useful tool for his goals. Why did he want to keep it? How much of it was because he didn’t like to duel, and how much was because he’d already committed to walking into a path of darkness long ago? After all, he’d never set out specifically to be a ‘good guy’. That’s just how it worked out.

Astral looked away from Yusaku. “Well, the only way forward is to win this Number in a duel. You should stay out of this; it’s dangerous to duel a Number without one of your own. They can only be defeated by other Numbers. Yuma and I can take care of this.”

Yusaku had no objections to that. He certainly wasn’t eager to jump into a duel.

“Yeah, we got this, no problem! You can cheer for us!” Yuma ran over to Astral and Yusaku. “Hey, Yusaku, where’s your Duel Gazer?”

“My what?”

Yusaku already knew that this place didn’t have a virtual duel world like he was familiar with. But apparently, duels here made use of augmented reality technology. In order to see what was happening in the duel, you needed to look through some accessory. That set off several red flags in Yusaku’s head.

“I’ll pass,” he told Yuma once the whole thing had been explained to him.

“But you won't be able to see me crush this guy.”

“My ears work perfectly fine,” Yusaku said. Right now, he had no interest in seeing anything using augmented reality. Listening would be good enough.

The duel was difficult to watch. Yusaku envied the way Yuma could have fun dueling no matter what. Really, he did. Yusaku hadn’t been able to experience that since he was much younger than Yuma, and he suspected he wouldn’t be able to for many years to come if he ever would be able to at all. But Yusaku did used to enjoy the game, and he wished he could have fun again now. Watching Yuma have fun wasn’t the difficult part. What made this hard for Yusaku was how unprepared Yuma had come to this duel, knowing he would have to duel again soon and knowing how important it would be to win.

At least Astral knew what he was doing, but ultimately Yuma made all the final decisions between the two of them and Yuma had a tendency to get annoyed by Astral’s suggestions and ignore them.

Yusaku could barely breathe through the close calls that Yuma barely made it through. Yuma didn’t know a lot of his own cards’ effects. At one point, Yuma tried to play a trap card face-up in his monster zone. Trap monsters still had to follow the rules of traps. (“But it says when you play it to summon it like it’s a monster!” “Yuma, that only takes place after you activate the trap like you would any other trap.”)

In the end, however, Yuma and Astral were able to win the duel and take the Number back. Astral didn’t remember any significant memories from the Number; nothing helpful for Astral nor Yusaku.

Yuma ran to Yusaku after the duel. He didn’t seem fazed by any of the mistakes or close calls from his duel.

“That duel was so much fun!” Yuma yelled. “It was a tough one, but I was feeling the flow, and my dad’s cards came through like they always do!”

“Your dad’s cards?” Yusaku asked.

“Yeah.” Yuma closed his right hand around the key hanging from his neck. “This used to be my dad’s, too.” He stared off into the distance, his voice growing softer and quieter than Yusaku had heard it since they met. “Carrying around this key and using my dad’s deck, it’s like he’s here with me. They remind me of everything he taught me.” He frowned. “My… Both my parents disappeared. I know they’re still out there somewhere, they gotta be, but it’s still hard not having them here, sometimes. Using his cards helps.”

Yuma had been upbeat, stubborn, and cheerful the entire time Yusaku had been in Heartland City. But on this topic, all of that seemed to strip away from Yuma, leaving him melancholy and vulnerable. Deep down, it seemed Yuma stubbornly refused to call anything impossible because hope was the only thing he could do.

Asking about Yuma’s deck had led them into a topic that seemed difficult for Yuma. Yusaku felt bad; he hadn’t meant to hurt him.

It struck Yusaku how similar their situations were...and yet, completely the opposite. Yusaku was the one who went missing, while for Yuma, it was his parents. Yuma never gave up hope his parents were out there. Yusaku wondered if that was how his parents felt back them. Of course, after he was rescued…

Yuma sniffed. “I shouldn’t mope about my own problems to you when you’ve got plenty of your own. Yours are probably so worried about you.”

For a moment, Yusaku forgot how to breathe.It seemed like parents still happened to be a sore spot for him as well. At least when the topic was his own parents. He cleared his throat. He needed to say something. (He didn’t see how his problems could be considered any more important than Yuma’s right now.) “I wouldn’t know.”

“Are your parents missing, too?” Yuma asked.

Yusaku shrugged. “Maybe. I haven’t seen them in years.” 10, to be exact. Not that it mattered or anything. “After I was rescued, they just weren’t there. They never came back.” His words got stuck in his throat. Yuma clearly looked up to his father, had found memories and a lot of love for his parents. As for Yusaku… “I can’t even remember my parents’ faces.”

“That’s awful.” Yuma looked devastated by the information. He lightly touched Yusaku’s arm, trying to offer comfort without overdoing it.

Yusaku didn’t push him away. “I’m used to being alone, so it’s fine.”

“That’s not true!” Yuma insisted. “Just because you’re used to it doesn’t make it okay. I’m used to my parents not being here, but that doesn’t make it okay. I miss them constantly. Kari misses them. My grandma misses them. It’s not good to be alone.” He paused. “If you’re used to being alone, you probably don’t have siblings, do you?”

“Not last I knew, which was a decade ago.” Yusaku hummed in thought. “I think the closest I’ve got is… Kolter’s brother was a victim of that incident, too.” No need to specify any further on Jin’s current state when that was private, and not Yusaku’s story to tell. “Kolter and I have been working together. We met because we both needed to figure out the truth behind what happened. Kolter also sells hot dogs for a living; he won’t let me pay him for hot dogs anymore, and he keeps a close eye on me. He tries to prevent me from overworking myself and tries to make me take care of myself.”

“He’s like an older brother to you, too,” Yuma commented.

Yusaku didn’t like to think about it. As a rule, he didn’t get close to anyone. Anyone who came close to him could be put in danger, and no one deserved that. He’d tried to push Kolter away several times when they first met, but Kolter was too persistent. He still felt guilty letting Kolter get involved, and the more he thought about his relationship with Kolter, the heavier that guilt felt. He only ever referred to Kolter as his acquaintance to keep anyone to think they were close, to keep him from worrying so much. Kolter was fully aware of any danger and signed up to work with Yusaku anyway, so worrying was pointless.

“I guess family doesn’t have to always be the people related to you by blood.” Yusaku shrugged. He didn’t confirm nor deny Yuma’s comment. “Sometimes you find people that are a better fit.” It wasn’t hard to be a better fit than someone who never found him again, honestly.

Yuma beamed. “Anyone can be family! As long as you have someone, you’re not alone.” He pulled Yusaku into a hug. “I’m glad you have someone. If nobody missed you, if you didn’t have anyone where you came from, I don’t know if I’d want you to go back, but… I’m happy to get you home since you do. You belong in the world you came from, and…and I get the feeling you and that hot dog guy need each other.”

Yusaku lightly wrapped an arm around Yuma. He didn’t know what to say since he was so wrapped up in his own thoughts.

Here, the incident never happened, and Yusaku wasn’t Playmaker. He still wasn’t exactly sure where that left him. But he had less of a reason to keep up a distance from everyone here since relationships wouldn’t put anyone in danger. He found himself relieved that Yuma still had a family even without his parents, and… He found himself relieved that Yuma was here to help him now. That he wasn’t doing this alone.

In a way, Yuma was starting to almost feel like a younger brother to him.

#hugsaku #hugsaku2021 #yugioh vrains #yugioh zexal #tater writes #yo there's actual a duel in this one!! and by a duel i mean a duel occurs and it's described as briefly as possible #if you're hungry for an actual duel.......just wait ;)

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