Chapter Text
At first, there was white noise, a faded roar that filled his ears as he started to feel less and less of his own body attached to him. He could no longer hear the sound of his old friend’s screams over the noise, so he closed his eyes so that he could block out the sight of his tears too. Then, there was nothing. And Nasch accepted it without struggle.
Despite the finality of it all, it happened all too quickly that Nasch began to feel consciousness again. He felt his mind and memories start catch up to him, and then his breath.
In a daze, Nasch forced himself to open his eyes. What he found couldn’t be heaven or hell or anything in between… it was an attic. Aside from the various ancient-looking artifacts that littered every corner, it looked to be a fairly ordinary attic too. The sun was shining through the window and highlighted each floating speck of dust. Despite its bizarre features, the place was… snug. And warm. And nothing he had expected to find awaiting him in the afterlife.
Feeling like he had just woken from a dream, Nasch scowled in confusion. This didn’t make any sense. The rest of his memories were slowly catching up and he remembered distinctly losing to Yuma. He remembered dying… as he watched Yuma cry and reach out for him in vain... Nasch sighed in frustration and brought a hand up to rub his temples, but stopped abruptly when he realized that said hand was transparent. Suddenly, he felt cold and looked down at the rest of his body, and sure enough, he was completely see-through, like a ghost. Like Astral. Nasch didn’t have much time to panic because right at that moment, a familiar figure burst through the latch in the floor, causing him to jump.
“Man, Tetsuo beat me again today! Alright, after dinner I’ll have to re-strategize my deck!”
“Yuma! Don’t even think about goofing off until you’ve finished your homework first, got it?”
“Geez! I got it!”
Nasch gaped at the boy in front of him. It was unmistakably Yuma, from his obnoxiously pointy hair to his perpetually cheerful demeanor. He was in his school uniform and had that usual dumb look on his face. Was this his house? Why on earth was Nasch in Yuma’s house?
“Yuma-,” he started to say.
“Oh, I’m back Shark!” Yuma grinned, but he looked right through him.
Nasch raised an eyebrow and walked towards him. “Oy Yuma, just what is going o-.” He didn’t get to finish, because Yuma walked right through him. He gasped and clutched at his chest. He should’ve expected as much with his given form, and it didn’t hurt, per say, but it was all kinds of uncomfortable, like he was scattered and stopped existing for a split moment.
“Sorry I keep leaving you here all the time while I’m at school. I figured it wouldn’t be good to wear you around my neck along with the key, you know?” Yuma laughed a little.
As Nasch gathered himself after the unsettling feeling of being phased through, he turned around to see Yuma crouching over and picking up something shiny. He walked closer to peek over Yuma’s shoulder, and his breath got caught in his throat. It was his Barian crest – the glittering red jewel that always seemed to pulse with energy sat firmly in its intricate design flawlessly as always. Nasch’s hand instinctively went to his chest to feel for it, but surely enough, it was gone. Rather, it was sitting in front of him. Yuma had his Barian crest for some reason and was… talking to it.
“…Is this some kind of joke?” he muttered.
Nasch continued to stare in disbelief as Yuma chattered away to this inanimate object as if it were actually a person – as if it were Nasch.
“Plus, I don’t think I could jump over the 100 blocks in gym class with you as added weight,” Yuma remarked, as if it were only common sense that a pendant would be the only thing stopping him from jumping over 100 blocks.
Already growing incredibly tired, Nasch ran his hand over his face. Okay just stay calm, he told himself. This might just blow over in a day or two… right? He didn’t believe in his own words.
How did this happen in the first place? The last thing he remembered was losing to Yuma, and losing his life in the process. There were multiple times in various lives where Nasch had felt death’s clutches, but this was a new experience altogether. From what he could gather, it seemed that the Barian crest preserved his soul inside its gem, similarly to how Astral lived inside the Emperor’s Key. And Yuma must have picked it up after the duel.
“Hey, Shark… You can hear me in there, can’t you?”
Nasch retracted from his thoughts to look back to Yuma, whose expression had grown just a little solemn. He was still smiling, but it was half-hearted and lacked cheer. It wasn’t the usual smile that Nasch, that Shark, had grown to love. But there was still hope in Yuma’s eyes. Naturally.
Yuma…
As much as he longed to call out to him, Nasch knew it was pointless to try, so he stayed silent. He watched as the younger boy’s shoulders slumped in dismay, and then immediately perked up again.
“That’s okay! You don’t have to talk right now – you’re probably just in a bad mood, like usual.” Yuma nodded approvingly at his own conclusion. His expression suddenly changed again into wide-eyed horror. “What if you’re sick?! Is that why you can’t respond?”
Idiot.
“Don’t worry Shark, I’ll save you!”
What was he doing now? Oh. Oh no.
Nasch stared in disbelief as Yuma carefully placed the Barian crest on a pillow and proceeded to tuck it under a blanket. At this point, Nasch was suffering from extreme embarrassment. What good would this do?! Yuma seemed to understand that he wasn’t the crest itself, that there was a slim possibility that he was inside the crest. While he was right and all, Yuma didn’t know that. And yet, here he was trying to bedrest a pendant. A cold, inanimate pendant.
Enough. It was one absurdity after another. In a fit of incredulity Nasch shouted, “Honestly, why are you such an idiot?!”
All of a sudden, Yuma turned abruptly to look over his shoulder and looked right at Nasch, at which the latter froze. No way… He couldn’t possibly see him, could he? Could it really have been that easy?
“Yuma…? Hey Yuma, can you see me?” Nasch said carefully.
Yuma looked confused as he looked away from where Nasch was and shifted his gaze to search around the room. “Shark…?”
“Yuma, I’m right here!” Nasch reached out to grab his arm, but of course, passed right through. Yuma didn’t seem to notice at all and turned back to the crest, but with no sign of being disheartened. If anything, his eyes shone brighter than before.
“That was you just now, right, Shark?” he beamed. “I guess you just weren’t feeling well, after all!”
“Like I said – ” Nasch started to say.
“I won’t leave your side so… hurry up, and come back soon okay?”
With that, the ghostly Barian king couldn’t say anything more. His shoulders slumped as he watched Yuma set up his school work and cards all into the corner where he had laid the crest down.
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Aside from dinner and bathroom breaks, Yuma was true to his word, and kept close to the Barian’s crest as he carried on his daily activities, glancing back at it every so often and chatting with it, even. Meanwhile, Nasch settled down next to the crest and continued to observe Yuma – there wasn’t much else he could do. And if Yuma couldn’t hear him, at least he could pretend that Yuma was talking to him without him responding. It wasn’t too different from normal, really.
As Yuma settled into the hammock for bed, Nasch wondered if he himself could even feel physically tired. He certainly felt some kind of fatigue but he wasn’t sure if it was one that a good night’s rest could fix. He supposed he probably wouldn’t be able to fall asleep tonight anyway.
“Hey Shark,” said Yuma. “You know I never wanted it to end like that, right?”
Nasch turned to look at the other boy, whose back was turned to him.
“I mean our last duel. I really wanted to have a future together… Eat lunch together… Duel lots… I guess it really couldn’t be that easy.”
“…Yuma.”
“That’s why!” Yuma turned abruptly in his hammock. Nasch could see the moonlight on his face, highlighting the unbreakable resolve forming, and Nasch couldn’t look away.
“That’s why I just have to try harder. I’ll bring you back somehow, and I won’t give up no matter how long it takes. That’s my kattobingu!”
Appearing to be satisfied with that declaration, Yuma settled more comfortably in his hammock. “Good night, Shark!” he said before falling fast asleep in no time at all.
For the first time in a long time, the Barian king felt weakness. He curled himself up so that he could bury his face into his arms, and wrestled with conflicting emotions – frustration, confusion, anger, stress, guilt. But underneath it all, he dared to feel warmth. And somehow, even with his non-corporeal form, Nasch could feel his own heart race.