[UAU: fast-forward]

[masokaiser]

[Today has been...interesting, for the both of them.

Well, maybe less interesting on Juudai's end. He's probably used to ignoring Saruyama's scripts and hiding the new deck by now, which is really something that Kaiser should talk to him about. There's going to be serious danger to both of them if this continues.

Right now, though, he's busy picking mangoes out of a pile and trying to ignore his crippling shame.

(He really hadn't expected that to happen in the ring. He'd barely even noticed it, in the state he was in, blended in with the usual sick excitement of the duel. But he had taken a shock and for the first time he was truly prepared for it, ready for it, and...)

He shakes off the thought and turns back to the cart with his bag of fruit.

...There are considerably more cookies in the basket than the last time he checked.]

...Juudai.

Comments

[sternitfortem]

[ Juudai, who had turned to face the opposite direction, examining the cucumbers, stiffens. That script, which he had buried at the bottom of the trash can? Kaiser found it? For another minute, he turns one single cucumber over and over, scrutinizing it for microscopic flaws, until he finally sets it down and picks up another one. ]


It wasn't me. [ Juudai is aware that this is a variant of the same argument he has been using for two weeks now, and one that Kaiser is sick of hearing. ] I mean - it was like. I couldn't have pulled it off. Not convincingly. I don't know who he's got writing them.

[ Juudai taps a rhythm with the short, thin cucumber against his palm like a drumstick, lost in thought. ]

[masokaiser]

[...so, it's this again. He sighs softly, pulling a few boxes off the shelf.]

He writes them.

[He's been reading the scripts, all of them, even the ones he never brought up, and he's seen the progression. They were almost cartoonish, at first, played up and exaggerated for the ring, the kind of persona that you can put on and take off with the costume, a rubber mask. But as they went on, as Saruyama saw more and more of what Juudai is like when he's under pressure, when he's desperate, when he's in pain...

(as he gets the chance to see of Juudai what he saw of Kaiser in those ten gut-wrenching losses)

(the scripts have been moving closer and closer to the truth)]

...He's reading you, Juudai.