Opening his eyes, Yumi found himself standing in that same dark, empty world once again.
There was no sky above him. No ground beneath his feet. No wind brushing against his skin, no distant sound of life, no horizon to guide his gaze.
Only an endless void stretched in every direction, swallowing everything whole, as though the world itself had long since been erased and forgotten.
Yumi stared into the darkness for a moment, then let out a quiet sigh. "Again?"
With no real answer waiting for him, he shoved both hands into his pockets and began to walk.
His footsteps echoed softly through the void, each sound hanging in the air longer than it should have, repeating faintly as though the darkness itself were listening. There was no visible path beneath him, and yet he kept moving forward anyway, his pace steady and unhurried, as aimless wandering was the only thing this place allowed him to do.
He did not know how long he walked.
Time had no meaning here. Minutes and hours were blurred together into something hollow and weightless, impossible to measure. It might have been moments. It might have been much longer. In this place, the difference hardly mattered.
Then, something glimmered in the distance.
Yumi's eyes narrowed slightly as he slowed his steps.
A faint shimmer floated ahead, barely visible at first, like a speck of light struggling to survive in a sea of black. As he approached, that shimmer split and sharpened into something more, tiny fragments of light drifting through the air, each one moving as though caught in an invisible current.
They looked like broken pieces of glass, except there was no sharpness to them, no threat. Only memory.
One fragment drifted toward him and stopped directly in front of his face.
A young Kaito stood there, much younger than the one Yumi knew. He was laughing brightly as he pushed a small child on a swing in a quiet neighborhood park. The afternoon light bathed everything in a gentle warmth, the kind of warmth that belonged to ordinary days, to simple happiness, to a world where nothing terrible had yet happened.
The little boy on the swing laughed with pure delight, his tiny hands gripping the chains as he tried to rise higher and higher into the air. Behind him, Kaito smiled with a carefree expression so natural and honest.
Yumi watched silently, his expression unreadable.
"…So that's your memory."
His voice was low, almost absent, as though he were speaking to someone who wasn't there.
Then he closed his eyes and gave a small shake of his head.
The memory shattered. The scene broke apart into countless glittering fragments, each piece scattering into the darkness before dissolving completely, as if it had never existed at all.
Before the last trace of it could vanish, another memory rose to replace it.
Red and blue lights flashed across the night in frantic bursts, painting the surrounding buildings in harsh, uneven color. Police sirens wailed in the distance, their sound sharp and endless, tearing through the silence like a blade.
A crowd had gathered nearby, faces hidden in the shifting light, voices rising and overlapping in shock and confusion. Officers stood at the center of it all, forcing a young man with black hair forward while his wrists were locked in handcuffs.
His face was the same as Yumi's. Only the hair color was different.
The sight made something cold settle quietly in Yumi's chest.
The man was being arrested. Accused. Condemned by the scene around him. And yet his expression remained strangely empty, as though the chaos surrounding him no longer had the strength to reach him.
He had tried to save someone. Instead, he had been framed. Turned into a criminal.
Yumi watched the memory with a long, silent stare, then shook his head once more as the image shifted again.
Now he was in a dim interrogation room.
The lighting was poor, casting long shadows across the narrow space. The walls seemed to close in around the table, making the air feel heavy and suffocating. On one side sat Past Yumi, silent and still, his face worn down by exhaustion and betrayal. Across from him sat the man responsible for everything.
The same man. He wore a smile.
The smile of someone who enjoyed breaking another person apart, piece by piece, and watching as their life collapsed in front of them.
Without saying a word, the man reached into his coat and calmly pulled out a pistol fitted with a suppressor. The motion was deliberate, almost casual, as though he were retrieving nothing more than an ordinary tool.
Then he lifted the weapon and pressed the barrel directly against Past Yumi's forehead. And then, he pulled the trigger.
When Yumi opened his eyes again, he found himself back in his dorm room, lying on his bed, and for a few quiet seconds, he did nothing at all except stare up at the wooden bunk above him as though he still could not quite believe he had returned.
Moonlight slipped in through the dorm room window, pale and still, casting a faint silver glow across the room and making the shadows in the corners where the orange fat cat Pharaoh was sleeping.
Slowly, Yumi pushed himself upright.
Only then did he notice that his jacket had been taken off, leaving him in just his shirt, and that it was nowhere in sight.
"Ugh..."
A low groan escaped him as he raised a hand and rubbed the back of his neck, his brow furrowing almost immediately afterward. His voice carried a rough edge of irritation, the kind that came from being dragged back to unpleasant memories that had long since been buried and left alone on purpose.
"Why the hell was I dreaming about that..."
The words came out in a mutter, but the annoyance in them was plain enough. On top of that, he felt a little lightheaded, and that only made his mood worse, because there was nothing more irritating than waking up with the lingering weight of a bad dream and the unpleasant sensation that something about the night had gone wrong.
In his previous life, Yumi had been the sort of person others would probably have called a do-gooder, someone who believed that helping others and putting them before himself was the right thing to do. He had reached out, he had trusted, and he had given more of himself than he ever should have, all because he thought that was what a decent person was supposed to do. And in the end, because he tried to help that woman, he had been killed.
That was the reason he was here now.
That was the reason his second life had become the way it was.
In this life, Yumi did not live by kindness, nor did he go out of his way to help others simply because they needed it. He had become selfish, cautious, and more than a little dishonest whenever the situation called for it. He did not help people because it was the right thing to do; he only helped them when there was something in it for him. That was the simple truth of it.
Unlike Jaden, who could smile at just about anyone and somehow end up making friends before the day was over, Yumi only looked at people for what they could provide in return.
His way of thinking might have seemed twisted to some, but after spending an entire lifetime reaching his hand out to help others only to be killed for it in the end, he had no intention of repeating the same mistake in this second chance of his.
"And why does my head feel so damn heavy..."
Muttering under his breath, Yumi raised a hand toward his forehead.
Instead of touching bare skin, however, his fingers brushed against rough cloth.
"Bandages?"
He blinked once before carefully tracing the fabric wrapped around his head. The bandage job was... terrible.
"What kind of wrapping job is this?"
It was wrapped unevenly, slightly crooked, and looked as though whoever had done it had simply gone around his head several times before deciding that was good enough.
Even worse, when he pressed a little more carefully near his temple, he could feel the faint stiffness of dried blood beneath the cloth.
He stared blankly for several seconds.
"Who wrapped this?" He paused. "Actually, the heck happened?"
No matter how hard he tried to pull the memory back into place, there was just nothing there, a blank stretch in his mind that refused to open no matter how much he frowned at it. He remembered the duel. He remembered Jaden and Jesse collapsing. He remembered walking toward the infirmary.
After that, however... Nothing.
"I'll worry about that later."
With a small shrug, Yumi decided not to waste any more of his energy on it for the moment.
He raised a hand and casually summoned his Nurse Dragonmaid, who appeared beside the bed almost at once.
A gentle-looking dragon girl stepped forward, her calm expression and composed posture making the room feel a little more orderly the moment she arrived.
Yumi gave her a brief glance, and she answered with a soft smile before immediately walking over without needing any further explanation. She reached for his head with care and began removing the badly wrapped bandages, one layer at a time, until the uneven mess had been completely undone.
After only a single look, she let out the smallest sigh, and even without words, the disappointment was easy enough to understand. Whoever had attempted first aid on him had clearly done a terrible job, and Nurse Dragonmaid did not seem impressed in the slightest.
Yumi said nothing, only watching quietly as she cleaned away the remaining blood on his head before rewrapping his head with fresh bandages. This time, the work was neat, careful, and properly secured, the kind of treatment that immediately made the pressure in his head feel far more manageable.
"...Thanks."
In response, Nurse Dragonmaid only gave him a soft smile and a small bow before stepping back.
Without pausing for long, Yumi then summoned Parlor Dragonmaid and Kitchen Dragonmaid, letting the two maids handle the matter of preparing something for him to eat.
Parlor Dragonmaid straightened at once with cheerful energy before promptly grabbing Kitchen Dragonmaid by the wrist and dragging her toward the kitchen with far too much enthusiasm for such an late hour.
Kitchen Dragonmaid sighed in a manner that suggested she had already accepted her fate, though she still let herself be pulled along.
Watching the two disappear downstairs, Yumi finally allowed his shoulders to relax a little as he leaned back against the headboard.
That was when something else caught his attention.
His gaze drifted slowly to his left wrist.
The broken wristband.
The sight brought the events of the duel back to his mind in a hurry, and now that he was no longer distracted by his thoughts or a bad headache, the details started to come back to him one after another.
When he had dueled Jaden and Jesse earlier, both of them had fainted from exhaustion, which should not have happened, or at least not in the way it had. Jaden, especially, was someone who normally loved dueling so much that he could keep going for hours without complaint, yet today he had collapsed just after a single duel as though his strength had been drained out of him all at once.
That alone had been strange.
But then there was the other thing.
"The spirit energy..."
The words left him in a low murmur as he realized that after the duel had ended, the amount of Spirit Energy he had gathered had not increased at all.
Spirit Energy was supposed to be generated by duelists as they dueled, almost like experience points being dropped in a game. The stronger the duel, the more energy should have been released, and yet somehow...
"I didn't get any from them..."
The oddity of it made him narrow his eyes.
His gaze shifted back toward the wristband, and for a moment, he simply looked at it in silence before lifting his other hand.
Golden particles gathered in his palm, swirling together in a quiet spiral of light. The glow slowly condensed, piece by piece, until a blank card began to take shape in his hand. Lines appeared across its surface. Then the artwork gradually formed, detail by detail, until the card was finally complete several minutes later.
Yumi held the finished card up in front of him.
At the same instant, a massive Link Circuit unfolded across the room.
All eight of its Link Markers lit up at once, and a brilliant blue light poured downward like a waterfall, filling the space with a sharp but strangely beautiful glow. Standing in the very center of that luminous structure was a mature woman dressed in sleek white-and-blue futuristic attire, her long cyan-blue hair flowing down her back while bright yellow side bangs framed her calm, expressionless face.
Her composure remained perfectly steady.
"Dimension Linker."
Her gaze moved toward him.
Yumi raised his left arm a little higher and gave a small nod toward the damaged device.
"Can you take a look at this?"
Without asking any questions, Dimension Linker stepped closer.
She gently took hold of his wrist and examined the wristband from every angle, her eyes cool and precise as thin blue holographic screens unfolded around her fingertips. At the same time, tiny mechanical drones no larger than insects detached from her sleeves and began scanning the device, while streams of digital code flickered across the floating displays in rapid succession.
A few seconds passed in silence.
Then, with a quiet metallic click, the wristband unlocked.
Dimension Linker removed it from Yumi's arm and turned it over several times without speaking, her expression unchanged as she inspected the fractures more closely, moving toward the nearby desk and sitting down. After that, using the advanced tools integrated into her equipment and the technomancy unique to her existence, she began dismantling the device piece by piece.
Tiny screws floated upward.
Hidden circuits unfolded.
Layer after layer of miniature machinery revealed itself beneath the outer casing, each component more intricate than the last.
Suddenly, the door opened, and Yumi looked up just in time to see Celina stepping inside, her expression tense and a little awkward, as though she was already regretting the timing of her appearance before she had even fully entered the room.
"Oh... you're awake," she said, her voice carrying that hesitant, uneasy tone of someone who was not quite sure how to begin.
She raised a hand and scratched the back of her head lightly, her gaze shifting away for a moment as a faint flush of embarrassment crept into her face. After all, she was the one who had headbutted him earlier, and she had used far too much force when she did it, so much so that blood had ended up dripping from his head and she had immediately panicked the moment she realized she had hit him harder than she meant to. In a hurry, she had taken off Yumi's jacket and wrapped it around his head before rushing him back to their room, not wanting to leave him alone in that state for even a second longer.
Another problem, however, was that they had only just left the infirmary a few moments ago, and returning with an injured roommate so soon after leaving would draw more than a few suspicious looks their way.
Because of that, Celina had no choice but to bring him back and try to bandage the injury herself before anyone decided to ask questions.
After she finished awkwardly explaining everything, Yumi stayed silent for a moment, simply looking at her in a way that made it impossible to tell what he was thinking. Then, after a brief pause, he let out a tired sigh, one that seemed to carry both resignation and faint amusement at the same time.
"You aren't mad, are you?" Celina asked hesitantly, clearly nervous about his reaction.
Yumi glanced at her, then gave a small shake of his head.
"No," he said at last, his voice flat but not unkind. "You were just trying to help, and failed, that's all."
There was no real edge to his words, no anger hiding beneath them, because no matter how clumsy the result had been, he could not bring himself to feel anything close to hatred over it. In fact, there was something almost familiar about the whole situation, something that stirred a quiet thought in the back of his mind.
Celina's actions, in her own awkward and clumsy way, reminded Yumi of the person he once was.