nov. 2018 - ryoken/yusaku

[trainerlyra]

title: (untitled)
date written: nov 4th, 2018
notes: this was originally written for datastormshipping week 2018, prompt "lost", but i never posted this one for some reason..? i think i thought it wasn't finished but oh well. i have a lot of different thoughts on what yusaku's life could have been like before the lost incident & pre-canon, but this was before i decided it made more sense for him to be an orphan and then hack an emancipation certificate or w/e... though i don't actually know if japan has minor emancipation? but let's pretend it does. can you tell i think way too much about the legal ramifications in a series where modern society is based upon a card game

Nothing made sense anymore, to Yusaku.

It had been three months, now, since he had left the hospital with only his father -- his mother gone, with no explanation from his dad no matter how many times he asked for her -- and it felt like nothing had moved since that day. His body had been taken out of the room, yes, but his mind?

Yusaku vaguely wondered if they had left it there, in that headset, a voice whispering at him to remember three things.

..

It was his first day back at school, after four months since he had left the hospital. He had been in and out of sessions with adults who he didn’t know, women who tried to make him forget about what had happened to him, and now they had deemed him “good enough”.

His seventh birthday came and went, gone in a flash; his father not having the heart to do anything for him, sitting at his desk the same as every day. Things had changed so much, Yusaku wasn’t even sure he remembered what they were like before.

Did he have a happy family beforehand? Did he have friends, did he go to school regularly?

School. He looked outside the building, kids coming up and down the stairs in a hurry. He wasn’t sure if he was ready. He didn’t think he would be. The group classes the women he didn’t know well had tried to put him in didn’t go very well -- he had thrown up once, when a student mentioned Duel Monsters.

Yusaku looked down. The seasons had passed, months were changing, but he felt as stuck as the day he left.

Three things, that voice whispered in his head. Remember three things -- three things to live, three things to go home, three things to defeat the enemy. He took a deep breath. He could do that, he thought. Three things to get him through the day. Three things.

..

Eight. He was eight now. Everything kept moving, but still, Yusaku stayed frozen, standing still in time. Nothing moved, for him -- his thoughts were trapped, his feelings were trapped, still stuck in that white room with only the headset for company.

School was hard, but not the curriculum. Yusaku didn’t even bother putting effort into that -- it wasn’t worth it. He couldn’t imagine himself ever growing up, ever getting a job, ever being anything useful to anyone. All he could imagine was himself sitting, wasting away in that room, cold and tired and drained.

Nobody spoke to him, anyway. None of the kids wanted anything to do with him. He once overheard someone talking about Duel Monsters and his world went black; next thing he knew, he was in the nurse’s office, an ice pack on his head.

Yusaku supposed fainting was a better alternative to throwing up.

..

He wondered vaguely what the school or those therapists he used to see five years ago would do, if they knew he lived on his own now.

At twelve, his father had went on a business trip, leaving him in their small, empty apartment. He sent money, every few weeks, but that was the most he heard from him. He didn’t ever even try to contact him after he had left -- he wasn’t sure how. Talking to people, reaching out for them…

It was like Yusaku existed in a different part of the world, as he watched everything happen from across a mountain. Still, after six years, Yusaku was stuck, cursed to stand still in the flow of time for the rest of his life. Nothing had gotten easier, nothing had made any more sense to him at all. Sure, he could eat, drink, and go to school now. But life was still the same.

Hey, you. Be strong, the voice would sound in his head on days like this. Yusaku gripped his school bag tighter, scrunching his eyes as he walked. Yes, he thought to himself. Three things. Three things to get through this. I will save you, too.

That voice was the only thing that could cross into Yusaku’s existence.

..

The nightmares were never ending.

Every night, every single night, Yusaku awoke with a start, pulled out of his dreams by his visceral need to make it stop. The words You Lose appearing in his vision, the full body shock he experienced… Every night, it was enough to wrench him from sleep, sweat dripping down his face.

He couldn’t take it anymore. He was losing himself even more to the darkness, and he couldn’t let that happen. Not before he found that voice, not before he saved them.

He had told himself three things, as he sat at the Duel Monsters store and sorted through cards, the nausea building itself in his stomach as he did so. Three reasons to do this, three reasons to uncover the truth.

One: He needed to do so for himself. Time hadn’t moved, and he was still trapped in that room. Yusaku doubted he would ever be able to go forward if he didn’t understand what had happened; why it had happened.

Two: He wanted to do so for the other victims. Yusaku could barely remember, but there had been five other kids in the hospital the day they were all rescued. If he ended up like this, he knew there were others out there, lost just like him.

And three: He needed to save the owner of that voice. That voice, which had comforted him all those hard nights while he was trapped. That voice, which gave him a reason to keep going, to keep trying. That voice, which saved him again and again after he had come home.

That night, after another night of being jolted awake from a restless sleep, Yusaku’s eyes hardened, and he shoved his drawer open; pushing the Duel Monsters deck into the ratty old Duel Disk he had bought at the store.

He would solve this. He would save that voice, and he would finally make time move again for himself.

He had to.