Saturday, Third Municipal Middle School.
The entire classroom building was as quiet as if someone had hit the mute button.
There were no footsteps in the corridors, no voices reading aloud in the classrooms, and no younger students practicing basic dueling movements on the sports field.
When Yūki stepped through the school gates, the old man in the gatehouse was dozing, the newspaper in his hands covering half his face.
He did not wake him and headed straight for the Administrative Building.
Yūki pushed open the door to the Administrative Building.
Only the office at the far end of the ground-floor corridor had its lights on.
It was the vice principal's office.
Sato Renshan had said he would wait for him in his office on Saturday.
He really was there.
Yūki knocked twice.
"Come in."
Sato Renshan sat behind his desk, his suit jacket draped over the back of his chair, wearing only a white shirt with its sleeves rolled up to his elbows.
There were no documents on the desk, no lesson plans, not even a pen.
Just a cup of tea.
Its temperature was just right, and the tea leaves had not completely settled.
Sato Renshan raised his eyes and glanced at him.
"Had breakfast?"
"Yes."
"Have a seat."
Yūki pulled out the chair opposite him and sat down, set his schoolbag by his feet, and took the slip of paper out of an inner compartment.
"This is the build I came up with. I still need your advice, President."
Sato Renshan took it.
His gaze landed on the first line.
He read down line by line, his lips moving slightly as though silently reciting the card names.
Then he stopped.
Yūki waited for him to finish reading.
Sato Renshan laid the slip flat on the desk without speaking immediately.
He stared at those lines for a full ten seconds or more.
Then he looked up.
"Fujiwara."
"Yes."
"These cards..."
Sato Renshan's finger stopped beneath "Needle Worm."
"There are quite a few I don't recognize."
His tone was somewhat puzzled as he said this.
A five-star duelist who had been dueling for over thirty years did not recognize most of the cards on a list drawn up by a fifteen-year-old student.
That in itself was not normal.
Yūki said nothing.
Sato Renshan read the slip again from beginning to end.
More slowly this time.
"Needle Worm, Morphing Jar #2, Book of Eclipse..."
He read out three card names, then stopped beneath "Morphing Jar."
"This one I know."
At last, a hint of certainty entered Sato Renshan's voice.
"A flip effect. Both players discard their entire hands, then draw five cards each."
"I saw it in a friendly tournament once."
After saying this, he looked up at Yūki.
"But the others..."
They all had effects that sent cards from the opponent's deck to the graveyard in varying quantities.
Presented to any experienced duelist individually, these effects would not seem problematic.
Viewed together, they were an entirely different matter.
Sato Renshan's eyebrows slowly drew together.
He was thinking about what these cards were meant to do together.
A moment later.
Sato Renshan put down the slip.
He leaned back in his chair.
He fell silent for a few seconds.
"That second deck you mentioned."
"This is it?"
Yūki nodded.
"Deck destruction."
Sato Renshan picked up his teacup and took a sip.
The tea was no longer steaming.
"Fujiwara."
He set down the cup and tapped his fingers against the edge of the desk.
"This deck and your earlier hand destruction approach."
"How different are they, fundamentally?"
Yūki thought for a moment.
"One tears apart the hand, the other tears apart the deck."
Sato Renshan: "..."
That answer was far too matter-of-fact.
"What I mean is..."
Sato Renshan considered his wording.
"If you build this deck and duel someone with it, wouldn't it be a little too... too agonizing for your opponent?"
He stressed the word "agonizing."
"This deck of yours doesn't touch the front row or the back row. It just keeps chipping away at their deck. That doesn't seem to have much to do with... dueling head-on."
Yūki did not rush to answer.
He looked at Sato Renshan and suddenly smiled.
It was a faint smile, a brief twitch of his lips before it vanished.
"President."
"Yes?"
"What do you think a duel is?"
The question made Sato Renshan pause, his brow furrowing slightly.
"A duel is between two duelists..."
"Exactly."
Yūki interrupted him.
"Between two duelists, not two decks."
Sato Renshan fell silent.
"A duelist's hand is his weapon, and his deck is his ammunition supply."
"If you leave a duelist with no cards in his hand to play and no cards in his deck to draw, of course he'll feel miserable. When he feels miserable, he'll get anxious. When he gets anxious, he'll make mistakes. When he makes mistakes, he'll lose."
Yūki's tone was very calm as he said this.
As though he were stating a simple fact.
"Psychological warfare is part of tactics, too."
He paused.
"Make your opponent defeat himself first."
Sato Renshan did not speak immediately.
He looked at the fifteen-year-old boy before him.
Two things were running through his mind.
First, applied to dueling, that logic really was sound.
Nothing in the dueling rulebook said you could not strip someone's deck bare. If the rules allowed it, it was a tactic.
Second, how could a fifteen-year-old kid play cards with that kind of approach?
Over his thirty-plus years of dueling, Sato Renshan had faced more opponents than he could count.
Some aggressively rushed down life points, some played steadily, some overwhelmed their opponents with powerful cards, and some even won through the finer details of their plays.
But no one had ever started a game with the goal of "making the opponent mentally crumble first."
This was not playing cards at all.
This was attacking the person.
He grumbled inwardly.
Who would want to duel a deck like yours?
The words hovered in his throat, but he did not say them.
Sato Renshan lowered his gaze to the slip again.
Card Destruction.
He knew this card.
Both players discarded their entire hands and drew the same number of cards from their decks.
It occasionally appeared in competitive play, but few people used it, mainly because the risk of helping the opponent refresh their hand was too great.
But in this setup, Card Destruction was not helping the opponent refresh their hand.
It was helping the opponent send cards to the graveyard.
While doing so, cards in his own setup would trigger: Needle Worm, Morphing Jar, Morphing Jar #2, and so on.
Before the opponent knew it, their deck would be stripped bare.
Sato Renshan exhaled softly.
"How strong is it?"
"Pretty strong."
Yūki answered very quickly.
Sato Renshan glanced at him.
This kid could not even be bothered to pretend to be modest anymore.
"The way this deck of yours plays..."
Sato Renshan thought for a moment, then finally said what was on his mind.
"Your opponent will very likely be unhappy after you win."
"I'd be even unhappier if I lost."
Yūki's reply came instantly.
Sato Renshan: "..."
He really had no way to argue with that.
Sato Renshan rubbed his temples.
After being locked down by Yata-Garasu two days ago, he had known this kid's approach to dueling was unusual.
Seeing the list today, he realized that deck from two days ago had been relatively mild.
Hand destruction at least let you get cards into your hand.
Deck destruction solved the problem at its source.
No, it did not solve the problem.
It dealt with the person who had the problem.
Sato Renshan picked up the slip and read it again.
"I recognize these staple traps."
He pointed at Mirror Force and Dust Tornado.
"As for the rest, I'll need to check with the supplier about some of them. Cards like Needle Worm aren't rare, but very few circulate on the market. I'll have to look."
Yūki was not surprised.
Needle Worm had 750 attack.
In this world where attack determined everything, a monster with 750 attack was worth even less than a vanilla monster.
Never mind buying or selling it; it did not even deserve a second glance.
"Can you find them?"
"Hard to say."
Sato Renshan paused.
"But I'll do what I can."
He pulled open a drawer and took out a well-thumbed business card album.
The album's corners had worn round, and the gold lettering on its cover had faded to mere outlines.
Yūki glanced at it. Tucked inside were not only business cards, but also sticky notes, newspaper clippings, and several handwritten contact details.
After more than thirty years in this circle, Sato Renshan hadn't built his network through search engines.
"I'll get all these cards together for you before Monday."
Sato Renshan folded the slip of paper and slipped it into his shirt's breast pocket.
Yūki nodded.
"Thank you, President."
"Don't thank me yet."
Sato Renshan leaned back in his chair.
"I have one condition."
Yūki waited.
"After the first match, I want you to leave the other schools' scores far behind."
There was no smile on Sato Renshan's face as he said this.
But something flashed in his eyes.
"Make them remember Third Municipal Middle School's name this year."
Yūki looked at him.
"I'll do my best."
"Not your best."
Sato Renshan picked up his teacup and brought it to his lips.
"You must."
The tea was no longer hot, and he drank half a cup in one go.
Yūki paused for half a second, then put on a thoroughly earnest expression.
"Rest assured, President. I'll give it my all to bring honor to the school."
Sato Renshan nearly choked on his tea.
He looked at Yūki's deadly serious face and fell silent for three seconds.
"Fujiwara."
"Yes?"
"That's exactly the same expression you wore when you fleeced me yesterday."
Yūki blinked.
He said nothing.
Sato Renshan chuckled.
"All right."
He set his teacup back on the desk.
"Come to my office Monday morning to pick up the cards. The tournament runs from Wednesday to Friday, so adjust your deck yourself on Tuesday night."
"Okay."
Yūki stood up and swung his schoolbag over his shoulder.
As he reached the door, Sato Renshan suddenly spoke.
"Yūki."
Yūki turned back.
Sato Renshan leaned against the back of his chair, his sleeves still rolled above his elbows. His white shirt looked a little worn under the fluorescent lights.
He looked at Yūki, his lips moving slightly.
As though he wanted to say something.
"...Never mind."
"See you Monday."
"See you Monday."
Yūki closed the door behind him.
He walked down the stairs.
Then he made a silent quip.
Sato Renshan hadn't managed to hide that expression just now.
He had clearly wanted to say, "That deck of yours is way too nasty."
But the words had caught in his throat.
Because saying it wouldn't have done any good anyway.
Before you continue