Chapter Text
He tries to keep his apartment as a safe place – at least, as well as he can, and for as long as he can. And as instrumental as he café truck was in the battle with the Knights of Hanoi and the Ignis, he doesn’t want to scare Jin away from his workplace either.
SOL Technologies is, of course, out of the question. And a public area like the Den City square or one of the rentals will have too many people for Jin to be comfortable in.
In the end, Yuusaku offers his apartment, and there’s an underlying symbolism with that, Shoichi thinks, given that Yuusaku was the first of the kidnapped children to fight against the cause.
Or maybe Spectre was, but given they were on opposite sides of the battlefield, perhaps that’s a chicken and egg scenario.
Though Yuusaku’s apartment looks a little more cramped than before. His parents seem to be staying a few days, though they’re not in at the moment. There are two bags and several board games, as well as extra futons rolled in a corner. Roboppi, too, has been moved from his initial spot against the wall: he is now propped up against the pantry, dressed in what Shoichi is sure is one of his old aprons. It looks a little more homely, anyway. A little less comatose… and funny how well a robot can give that impression. Or maybe it’s because Shoichi saw Jin back then: wide blown pupils, blank and barely blinking stare, and remembers how it called the goosebumps on his skin every time.
But the Jin of the present doesn’t have blown pupils and is staring curiously around. Shoichi hopes he sees it as a safe battlefield.
Of course, safe does not take away the awkwardness. They sit around the table together: Yuusaku, Takeru, Shoichi and Jin.
“Coffee,” Yuusaku says abruptly, when the others fail to start. Shoichi has the game mat. He can read Jin better, he says, but the truth is he wants a bit more control over the situation. It’s all moot, anyway, he knows: Jin needs to be free to overcome his past, and Shoichi might hide behind his big brother role but he wants that for Jin as well.
“Tea?” Jin asks, before Shoichi can ask the same.
And Shoichi relaxes, because that means he’s settling in.
Thankfully, Yuusaku does have tea, and a few different sorts – though Shoichi doesn’t remember him ever having tea during the time they’ve been together. Then again, he doesn’t serve tea at his truck and they rarely meet away from it. While he’s been to Yuusaku’s house before, he doesn’t think he’s ever eaten or drunk anything there.
He also doesn’t see Yuusaku eating much other than fast food for the same reason, so that’s probably not an accurate representation of Yuusaku’s preferences.
And by the time Yuusaku returns to the table with four steaming mugs (all matching generic white, which Shoichi is sure came from the department store), Shoichi has laid out the duel mat.
Jin feels the worn leather. Traces the deck area, then the graveyard, then the five slots for monster cards and likewise for magic cards and traps. The finger’s unsteady; if he’d dipped it in paint first Shoichi is sure the lines would be squiggled, like their drawings of old.
Though Jin’s always been good at drawing and it’d been a long time since his lines have been unsteady in the finished product.
And Jin’s pupils aren’t blown. He still breathes audibly, visibly.
Shoichi breaths too: a big, gasping sigh of relief.
First stage: cleared.
Still, he can’t help but worry they’re moving too quickly when they take out a few structure decks that had been collecting dust in SOL Technologies.
Though, if Ai’s takeover was good for one thing, it was cleaning the cobwebs out of SOL Technology.
The cards themselves don’t invite horror, either. Maybe it’s because some are so faded that Takeru is squinting even with his glasses on to read them. Maybe it’s because they mostly consist of cards produced in the last ten years, and therefore Jin won’t recognise them. Maybe it’s because they’re physical cards, and as good as data transference is nowadays, there’s something to be said about the tactile sensation of true physical touch.
At least they don’t play a game today. Shoichi thinks, at this rate, he’s going to wind up cracking before his brother does.
But time cracks first. It gets dark. Yuusaku’s parents come back. The Kusanagi brothers take their leave, and Shoichi spends the night slumped against his brother’s bed, holding his hands as they shake with echoes of electricity. But Jin doesn’t protect going to Yuusaku’s place again the next day. He still takes the cards into his hands, and listens as Yuusaku explains the basic rules and a few common combinations with the structure decks.
And, this time, Shoichi can see Jin gravitating. Can see him choose strategies and cards, and discard others. He picks up light attribute monsters most of all… and concerning as it is, maybe Shoichi shouldn’t be too surprised. Only Playmaker and Ai seem to have deviated from their assigned attribute.
How did Doctor Kogami even assign them, he wonders? Not that anyone can answer that question now, except maybe his three assistants.
In the end, they put most of the other decks away. Jin’s taken to the Wave of Light pack and they can modify that quite easily: none of them play fairies, nor do any of their other contacts.
It’s going too well, though. Shoichi’s known that all along: he just didn’t know when it was going to fall apart. But the moment Jin draws a full hand and faced a partially set field, he freezes.
Takeru, thankfully realising the problem (or part of it), quickly sweeps his first turn away. And Shoichi murmurs gently in his ears until the pupils think and he hunches over. Yuusaku, in the meantime, has left and made more tea – chamomile this time.
Shoichi would smile if he wasn’t so worried about Jin, but Yuusaku’s people skills have improved since they first met.
They stop. Rewind a little. Restart. This time, Takeru allows Jin to go first. Allows Jin to get used to calling card names, battle modes, and attacks. At first, it’s just weak monsters in attack mode and the counter traps have no use at all. And when Takeru finally plays a counter, Jin freezes again.
They talk through it. Work through it. Day by day, they crawl a little further. And Jin has picked the counter fairies, the Wave of Light, for a reason. He wants to play those counter traps, and the sorts of strategies that can evolve.
It’s Yuusaku who comes up with the idea, in the end. “Instead of aiming to reduce the opponent’s life points to zero, why don’t we make different restrictions instead. For example, aim to complete a certain combination, or meet the requirements of summoning a high level monster.”
And that idea works better. Not concentrating on the outcome of the duel, where every card used can mean closer to victory or closer to defeat, but playing to improve one’s skills nonetheless. It works. He manages to special-summon Archlord Kriysta. He increases Neo-Parshath’s attack points to 10,000. He summons Sacred Arch Airknight Parshath from the graveyard via it’s special effect. He manages to use Eva’s and Layard the Liberator’s effect in conjunction to swam the field with enough synchro material to summon Avenging Airknight Parshath, and it’s a shame the structure deck hasn’t included it. And it probably wasn’t done intentionally, besides.
But Jin is perking up. He’s attacking and defending and not freezing every time he finds himself at a disadvantage. They progress to Jin looking at his opening hand before choosing a strategy or summon to focus on for the duel… but in doing so, the days tick by and all of them are aware they might run out of time at any moment.
And the nightmares continue. Shoichi ignores the cricks that develop in his neck from sleeping slumped against the bed because it makes a difference and he’ll be damned if he takes that away for his own comfort. And maybe that’s the biggest difference of all: that they’re in a safe environment, and they have Yuusaku and Takeru (and Akira who supplied the cards) all helping out, because they couldn’t have done this alone.
Jin is far from being able to hold his own but it’s progress, and it’s far more progress than he’d thought, hoped, or would have dared to try, alone.
But the timer’s ticking down. They can all hear it in the background, and all of them watch their duel disks like a hawk, waiting.
It’s an endless dance and he can only hope there’s happiness for all of them at the end this time.