In the special intensive care ward of the academy's medical department, the air was thick with the smell of disinfectant and blood pressure medication.
The Paradox Brothers lay side by side in two hospital beds, each with a cool fever patch on his forehead and oxygen tubes in his nose.
Both pairs of eyes stared blankly at the stark white ceiling, their pupils unfocused, without a trace of light in their gazes.
Silence.
Deathly silence.
"Brother..."
After a long while, the younger brother, Gong, broke the silence with a weak, hoarse voice, a faint ring of white mist forming on his oxygen mask.
"Do you think, if we just kept sleeping like this and never woke up... we could pretend this morning never happened?"
The elder brother, Paradox, turned his head expressionlessly, the muscles at the corner of his eye twitching twice against his will.
"Stop dreaming, Gong."
Paradox's voice was even colder than the ward's air-conditioning. "The hallway's full of students who followed the ambulance sirens to watch the show. When the nurse changed my IV just now, I heard those little brats whispering outside, asking whether six thousand attack points had traumatized us."
Gong closed his eyes and took a deep breath of oxygen. The heart monitor's beeping instantly quickened.
An utter humiliation.
Never in their lives had they suffered such indignity!
They were established big shots who had lasted so many turns against the King of Games, Yugi Muto, after all-an internationally renowned legendary duo.
Yet today, after taking a private side job at the academy, they had been steamrolled twice in a row by a bunch of freshly enrolled greenhorns who hadn't lost a single Life Point!
In the first match, that brat named Yūki had used Cyber-Stein to deal out cards on the spot, with