"I won—though I can't say it was a particularly enjoyable duel~"
Striking the same pose Jaden often used, Hoshino pointed straight at Aster.
Jaden, unable to contain his excitement, exclaimed,
"But I thought it was amazing! Sensei, you and Aster were both so strong! Is this what professional-level dueling is like?!"
Jaden… you might have a bit of a misunderstanding about what "pro level" actually means.
"I… lost. My father's Destiny HEROes… the D…"
At the center of the courtyard, Aster—having lost the duel—began trembling uncontrollably, muttering under his breath.
"This shouldn't be happening… Is my resolve really only this much…?"
"Are you okay, Aster?" Clara asked, clutching her chest in worry. It was the first time she had ever seen him in such a state.
"Looks like he just hasn't been beaten down by society enough yet. Lose a few more matches and he'll be fine~" Hoshino shrugged. Everything she needed to say had already been said during the duel. What remained was whether Aster could come to his own realization.
["No, something's off, aibo. This feels… strange."]
"Strange? Other me, you mean…?"
"AAAAAAH—!"
Before Hoshino could even process what Hoshino Alter meant, Aster suddenly screamed without warning and collapsed heavily in the middle of the courtyard, losing consciousness. The D·HERO deck inside his Duel Disk popped free, cards scattering across the ground.
Unconscious amid the mess of scattered cards, he looked exactly like someone who had lost a Shadow Game.
"How could this happen…?" Hoshino said in disbelief.
Although it looked like the aftermath of a Shadow Game, Hoshino—having personally experienced countless ones—could say with certainty that there hadn't been even the slightest trace of dark energy during the duel. There was no way it should have caused physical harm.
It couldn't be that he collapsed purely from the shock of losing, right? He was a professional duelist—his mentality shouldn't have been that fragile.
(***)
Phoenix Residence — Aster's Room
"Please don't worry so much, sis. I'm probably just exhausted from overworking lately."
After the private doctor's examination, no physical abnormalities were found. Even so, Clara ordered Aster to stay in bed and rest.
Clara said sternly,
"You suddenly screamed and collapsed like that—you scared me half to death! There's no way that looked like 'nothing'!"
["Yeah, that definitely wasn't nothing. To be honest, I kept sensing a faintly familiar fluctuation during the duel. I thought it was just my imagination, so I didn't mention it to you, aibo."]
Hoshino frowned slightly and asked inwardly,
"A familiar fluctuation? Then why could you sense it, but I couldn't detect anything at all?"
["Different identities. If it were dark energy, you would've picked it up immediately. But such a subtle light fluctuation? It makes sense you wouldn't notice."]
"Light… fluctuation?"
["As the King of Light, even the faintest ripple of light won't escape me."]
Back when Hoshino Alter had inherited the Pyramid of Light from Kaiba and Anubis, he had also inherited the title of King of Light, becoming a counterpart to Atem—the King of Darkness who bore the Millennium Puzzle.
"Aster, this is your deck, right? The one your real father left you. You shouldn't just throw it around like that."
After gathering up the scattered cards from when Aster collapsed, Clara neatly organized them and handed the deck back to him.
"Thanks, sis. You really saved me there."
Taking the deck, Aster instinctively flipped through a few cards—and his expression instantly changed.
"What… what is this?"
His brows knit tightly as his hands moved faster and faster, as if he had discovered something unbelievable within his deck.
"Sis, you're not joking with me, right? This isn't funny at all."
"What joke?" Clara tilted her head in confusion.
"This deck… it's completely blank. There's nothing on the card faces at all."
["Just as I thought…"]
Of course, Clara would never joke with Aster by handing him a deck full of blank cards.
The deck in Aster's hands was unquestionably the same D·HERO deck he had just used.
And the result matched Hoshino Alter's suspicions—
Washed by the fluctuations of light and defeated in the duel, Aster had paid a price entirely different from losing a Shadow Game.
Even having sensed the light's presence, Hoshino Alter still couldn't understand why this had happened—much less how to restore Edo to normal.
.
..
...
"I'm really sorry, Hoshino. You went out of your way to visit, and yet this happened…"
Standing before the grand gates of the Phoenix estate as she saw them off, Clara apologized with a troubled expression.
Hoshino scratched her cheek awkwardly.
"Clara… after dueling Aster and seeing him end up like this, I feel really bad about it too."
"No, Hoshino, this isn't your fault at all. Please don't think that way!"
Grasping Hoshino's hands, Clara spoke earnestly,
"If the doctors say there's nothing physically wrong, then this must be something psychological that Aster has to overcome himself."
During the duel, Clara had felt it too—Aster's obsession with the deck left behind by his biological father, his fixation on Destiny HEROes, had reached almost maddening levels.
It was also the first time Clara truly realized how unfamiliar the brother she had lived with for so many years felt.
"Just like you said during the duel, Hoshino—if Aster isn't shaken awake now, he'll inevitably sink into the mire of avenging his father through the Destiny HERO deck. I don't want to see him swallowed by hatred."
Feeling that merely holding Hoshino's hands wasn't enough to convey her emotions, Clara pulled her into a tight embrace at the last moment.
"So… if someone has to defeat Aster, I want it to be you, Hoshino. Please don't let this trouble you—and next time, make sure you come visit again. I'll be waiting, Hoshino."
Hoshino still wasn't quite used to this level of enthusiasm from foreigners.
"Uh… okay. Next time for sure."
That said, being pulled into a beautiful girl's embrace was hardly something to complain about. Any so-called "discomfort" could just go straight out the window. Still, she really couldn't understand why Anzu, Clara, and the others all liked hugging her so tightly. Was it because she was… easy to grab onto?
"(｡•ˇ‸ˇ•｡) Senpai!"
"Seriously, I never would've thought you'd get along that well with a high-class young lady like her, Sensei. That's impressive~"
With both hands clasped behind his head, Jaden strolled leisurely through the streets of San Francisco.
"Jaden?"
The surrounding cityscape—combined with Jaden still wearing his uniform while sightseeing—flooded Hoshino's mind with an intense sense of déjà vu.
("Let's have a graduation duel with no regrets, Sensei!")
"Ooooooh!"
All at once, Hoshino realized it—this very place was where she had once dueled Jaden from ten years in the future in a graduation match.
And in the blink of an eye, seven years had already passed. For the Jaden of this world, his own graduation duel was now only a little over two years away.
With the scenery as a trigger, Hoshino could easily recall that moment. In just two years, the difference between future Jaden and the Jaden standing before her—by any measure—had been enormous.
Leaving aside how much calmer and more composed he had become, his hair was a little longer, his confidence in duels far greater, and most importantly—
"Jaden, let me ask you something. Do your eyes ever turn heterochromatic?"
Jaden shook his head vigorously.
"Huh? No way! That's impossible. That's such a weird question, Sensei. I'm not some chuuni or anything."
"I see… so they don't change color," Hoshino muttered, stroking her chin.
She clearly remembered it—future Jaden's eyes had changed color, if only for an instant.
("Let's go, Yubel! Let Sensei see the power the two of us share!")
"Ah—Yubel! Jaden, where's your Yubel card?!"
In that memory, Yubel—the Duel Spirit—had clearly been fighting alongside Jaden.
But in this world, aside from their very first meeting, Hoshino hadn't seen Yubel even once.
A flash of sadness crossed Jaden's eyes.
"Yubel's card…"
"Huh? It's gone?"
"Yeah. After my first duel with you, Sensei, there was no fainting curse anymore, so the rumors about it being cursed were completely disproven. I was so happy that night that I took the Yubel card and went to duel the older guy next door."
That was very Jaden—running off to duel someone late at night.
"But even when I summoned Yubel in that duel, I still lost. I still couldn't fight side by side with Yubel."
Even after all these years, Jaden remembered that duel clearly. He must've been genuinely frustrated by that loss.
"The next day, the Yubel card was gone from my deck. After that, I never saw Yubel again."
"So Yubel disappeared after you lost the duel?"
Hoshino remembered that back then, Jaden—still just a kid—couldn't even see Yubel as a Duel Spirit. And yet, despite that, Yubel had loved Judai obsessively, even to the point of cursing duelists who defeated him.
With the curse severed by Shiki, and unable to make Jaden win through her own power… could Yubel have left Judai out of guilt?
Of course, that was only Hoshino's speculation. The real reason was something only Yubel herself would know.
"Even without Yubel's card, I wasn't especially lonely. After all, I met you and Akasha. Ever since meeting you, dueling has become way more fun."
["Still, it's a shame that a card with a spirit just vanished like that."]
"But since Jaden has already accepted that outcome, there's no reason for me to interfere."
They were different worldlines to begin with. Hoshino had no need to force this Jaden onto the same path as another version of him.
"Whether it's right or wrong, that choice belongs to you, Jaden."
It was a shame, though—Hoshino still couldn't figure out why Jaden possessed such immense spiritual power, enough to revive the Three Sacred Beasts.
And then there was the mysterious light fluctuation that had intruded during the duel with Aster—everything was riddled with unanswered questions.
No matter how impatient Hoshino felt, these weren't things that could be resolved quickly. After taking a nap on the plane, she returned to Duel Academy Island.
Jaden, for his part, didn't go home this time. He went straight back to the Red Dorm, saying he kind of missed Professor Banner, and decided to spend the rest of spring break relaxing at the academy.
Vacations are funny things. When you're waiting for them to arrive, time drags on endlessly. But once you're actually enjoying them, they're over in the blink of an eye. Einstein's Theory of Relativity (probably).
As the two-week break drew to a close, the academy's foundations—damaged when the Three Sacred Beasts broke their seal—were almost completely repaired under Crowler's personal supervision.
There was a small incident during the repairs—
The workers surveying the foundations discovered an old stone tablet, covered in ancient script, embedded within the cracked base of the academy.
"Mamma mia! Didn't this academy only have a three-year history, non?!"
"That is pretty strange," Hoshino said, nodding as she exchanged looks with Crowler.
If the Three Sacred Beasts had already been sealed beneath the island before the academy was built, that much made sense.
But then why would a clearly man-made foundation contain an ancient stone tablet—one that looked impossibly old and was carved with unknown characters? And when had it been placed there?
["Aibo, if it's ancient writing, maybe Kaiba can read it."]
Back in the Pharaoh's tomb in ancient Egypt, Kaiba had effortlessly read the ancient text describing the pyramid's mechanisms.
"Oh right—wasn't that guy a priest in his past life or something? Still, we don't even know if this is Egyptian script."
["Well, dead horse or not, might as well treat it like a live one. Let him take a look—it's free~"]
"Yeah, fair enough~"
Hoshino pulled out her phone, snapped a photo of the ancient tablet, and sent it to Kaiba's email.
[In a Duel Academy that supposedly only has a three-year history, we found an ancient stone tablet from a thousand years ago. Can you read the writing on it?] Sent.
Kaiba: "Can't read it. Just a boring prank."
An instant reply. Looks like President Kaiba was slacking off again.
But if even Kaiba couldn't read it, then it probably wasn't ancient Egyptian.
Just as Hoshino was about to put her phone away, a second message came through.
["However, the company does have a department that specializes in ancient scripts. I can have them take a look."]
Back during Duelist Kingdom and Battle City, Kaiba had created a special division to study the ancient inscriptions on the God Cards and analyze their effects.
But ever since the God Cards incident, that department had basically gone unused. Even Kaiba himself had nearly forgotten that KaibaCorp was still paying a whole group of experts who did nothing but eat and collect a paycheck.