365 Days of Starshipping (Part 1)

Fair Shopping

7/16/19

After finishing the cotton candy and cleaning up a bit, they decided to wander through the pop-up shops in the main square area of the park. Judai had managed to find a day where they were up and it wouldn't be too hot after all, so they got to go in the end. There were a couple little knick-knacks here and there, but nothing overly interesting beyond one shop full of little tools and other useful things.

Peeling Yusei away from that one was very, very difficult because he just couldn't decide what he wanted. Ultimately, Judai ended up just piling up everything he'd wanted, paying for it with an exasperated grin before Yusei could protest too much.

"You didn't have to buy it all..." Yusei mumbled as they walked away, though he had a small smile on his face so Judai knew he was happy about it.

"If I didn't do that we'd have been there all day," Judai teased, putting away the small bag of tools in the backpack, "Besides, some of those looked useful - I threw in an extra one that I thought would be interesting for some art stuff."

"Well, they were multipurpose," Yusei replied with a shrug, taking his hand again now that it was available. There wasn't too much of the shops left to look at, so they took their time going from booth to booth so it'd last longer.

Towards the end, a booth finally caught Judai's eye - it had shelves of different wallets, all with duel monster prints or patterns. There were some bags too, but what Judai was more focused on was the wallets.

"Y'know, I never thought about it before, but I don't have a wallet, do I?" Judai realized, glancing over all the different options, "I never bothered to get one and just shoved everything into my bag or pockets before, but... now that I'm settled down I probably should get one."

Yusei hummed in agreement, squeezing his hand for a moment and giving him an oddly happy smile that he couldn't quite decipher the reason for - was it something he said? Well, whatever the reason, at least he was happy about it.

Some of the duel monster ones were cool, but what eventually stood out to him was a small little wallet with a standard galaxy print on it. The colors were pretty and popped while not obscuring the stars in the pattern, and it was just the perfect size for him to carry around; there was a little add-on tab in the middle of it for a picture as well when you opened it, which he really liked the idea of having.

"You like that one?" Yusei asked curiously, studying it himself for a few moments before continuing, "It's well-made and the material is good, so it'll last you a long time."

"Yeah, I'm gonna get this one - I like it a lot," Judai said, waving the shop's watcher over so he could pay for it. With his brand-new wallet in hand they wandered out of the shopping area, with Yusei handing things over to Judai to put in his wallet while they walked.

"ID here, coins in the outside pocket... oh, you want me to put the extra cash in? 'Kay, I can do that," Judai said, putting everything in the appropriate parts before looking over it appreciatively, tossing it back and forth in his hands and opening it a few times, "Now I just need a picture and it'll be perfect. Maybe the flying one?"

"When you figure out which one, just tell me and I'll send the file to you so you can print it at the print shop," Yusei stated, to Judai's delight looking a little embarrassed at being reminded of those specific pictures. He didn't object to it though, so Judai could put them on the list of potential wallet pictures.

Judai hummed as he put the wallet away, glancing around at the park and asking, "Well, now that we're done with that, what do you want to do now? We could go on more rides, or play some of the carnival games... though to be honest, we might want to wait on those until the end so we don't have to carry anything around. We're obviously going to win on the ones that aren't rigged through the system itself."

"Wait, which ones are rigged like that?" Yusei blinked in confusion, "I mean, obviously they all are in some way, but there's ones where it's impossible to win?"

"Yeah, it's mainly just the squirt-gun ones though," Judai explained, "They can literally choose a person to win and flip a switch so they do. Not all places do it, but a lot do so they can squeeze money out of people - I remember when I figured that one out when I had a short stint at one of these places. All of the large groups of friends that would play suddenly made sense because then it didn't really matter who won - they'd get the largest prize by default due to the amount of people playing, plus they usually had a set person to give it to."

"...I'm suddenly glad we don't have to play that one to win any of those things," Yusei chuckled, pulling Judai into his side and placing a quick kiss on his head, "The only thing I have to worry about now is you winning so many that we can't carry them back."

"Hey! I wouldn't do that, besides there's not too many I want anyway!" Judai protested with a grin, laughing when Yusei ruffled his hair in response.

"So you did see one that you wanted."

"...Maybe."

"At least tell me they're not all stuffed animals and duel monsters, we're going to run out of places to put them if we keep going at this rate."

Judai looked away with a sheepish grin, laughing at the exasperated, fond sigh Yusei gave him before helping when he suddenly got a knuckle dug into the top of his head.