The bracelet that leads to the future

Chapter 4:The sad clown

Chapter 4:The sad clown

Every cheer felt like a punch in the guts and every smile felt like a sharp knife cutting his skin. Normally this was one of his favorite things in the world, everybody cheering and the children's smiles radiating positivity through the room, but not today.

He made his last somersault of odd eyes pendulum dragon's head and executed a perfect landing, keeping his best fake smile on his face.

His arms were stretched out as he took his bow to the audience. The cheers were at there loudest and he thought he was going to be sick.

He was still bowing when the curtains drew close in front of him. He stood there for a moment longer, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath finally dropping his smile. He knew he should be happy that the show made the kids smile. During his entire career of entertainment dueling and duel monster shows like this he never got tired of it, but today he just couldn't do it.

He finally opened his eyes and saw Yuzu dashing over to him from behind the stage.

"You were fantastic" she exclaimed, patting him on the shoulder.

"Na, you were better" he told her, putting the smile back on his face and trying to sound cheerful.

He really did think that. Even if he wouldn't have been distracted, he would have still thought that the coordinated musical and dance performance involving her Melodious monsters was clearly the high light of the grand opening of the new domino city You Show Duel School branch.

"Is everything ok?" she asked, with a concerned look on her face.

"Yes of course, of course." he replied quickly, while rubbing his neck and smiling even harder.

"Yuya you know you can't hide anything from me." Yuzu declared, with a stern look on her face. It was true of course. He couldn't hide the tiniest thing from her.

"I'm just jealous that your show was so much better than mine." he laughed weakly.

The look on her face told him that she didn't buy a word of that, but also that she could not quite tell what was going on.

Someone called Yuzu from backstage. Yuya, knowing that this was a battle he couldn't win, used that distraction to dash off the stage.

"I'm going to the dressing room. Your show was great. I will come back later." He called to her as he was making his escape. He did not see it, but he felt her eyes in his back.

Once in the dressing room Yuya slumped himself down in the chair and once again took a deep breath.

He cursed himself once again for not enjoying the smiles he got during the show. That was always his dream, bringing smiles to people, bringing love and joy and having a perfect family to boot.

All the smiles he made today and all the kids who will learn to love dueling like he does here are important, he knew, but today he could only think about one smile he couldn't bring and one kid who will never love duel monsters again.

His thoughts started to wonder.

What felt like a long time ago:

Yuya was lifting all the heavy chairs up and started moving them from the house into the garden.

He huffed and wondered why nobody was helping him with this difficult task.

The large Sakaki-Hiragi garden behind the house was decorated with balloons, garlands and confetti. It was flooding with bright colors. In the middle stood a long table that was already set with red, blue and green forks, knifes and plates.