Cardfight!! Vanguard: Heiwa

-Part 4

By the end of the day, after recovering enough of his strength to walk home on his own, Izuru arrived home and fell on the couch due to exhaustion. Neither of his parents, an ex-detective turned salaryman now working for the police again and a scientist at a lab in Tokyo, had arrived from work, and with his brother already living with his wife, he was alone.

Izuru quicly fell asleep on the couch, and only woke up hours later, already nighttime, due to the sound of the doorbell ringing. Despite resting for almost the entire day, many parts of his body still felt sore, and he felt a sharp pain on his torso every few steps. Opening the door, Izuru came face to face with Yumi, who was holding something behind her back.

"Y-yumi?" Izuru muttered, focusing on standing still to not show his friend signs of his fight.

"Good evening, Izuru-kun!" Yumi greeted, smiling.

"What brings you here? At this hour too... Is something wrong?"

"Hm? It's nothing." Yumi shook her head. "Well, sorta. I wanted to return this to you." She revealed what she was hiding behind her back; it was Izuru's school bag. "I found it yesterday when I came home from the supermaket and well... I-i called you, but it was a woman who answered and I didn't want to bother you so..." She said, flustered, looking away from Izuru with a slight blush on her face.

"Tate." Izuru spoke up.

"H-hm?"

"It was Tate fooling around. He probably grabbed my phone and answered you or something. I went to crash at his place yesterday because we had to study, second year stuff." He said. "Thanks for returning the bag, how'd you know it was mine?" Izuru asked, grabbing his bag.

"I looked inside and saw your headphones."

"Hm? My headpho-" Izuru tapped his neck and nodded. "Yeah, Tate was being picky about sound quality so I hid my headphones from him."

"Izuru-kun... You're lying, aren't you?" Yumi asked, looking down. "You've been dodging the question of how your bag ended up near my house for a reason. And everything you say just sounds like excuses..."

"Yumi..." Izuru sighed and placed both hands on her head, messing up her hair with a chuckle. "You worry too much about little old me."

"I-izuru-kun, stop!" Yumi giggled, trying to escape his grasp. When she did so, she looked at him with a pout. "You're not doing anything dangerous, right?"

"The Sawadas aren't particularly known for their healthy lifestyles, y'know?" Izuru joked. "I'm sticking to my unhealthy time playing video games and drinking coffee. Nothing more."

"You better!" Yumi nodded. "I should get going. Well... Good night!" She said in a hurry. Grabbing hold of the collar of Izuru's shirt, she briefly pulled him slightly closer to her and gave his left cheek a quick peck with her lips, but then dashed away, only looking back at him from the household's gate and waving. "See you on monday, Izuru-kun!"

"See ya." Izuru waved back and returned inside after Yumi left his eyesight.

After closing the door and sitting back on the couch, he placed his hand on the left side of his face. He sighed and leaned back on the couch, scrambling through his pockets until he took out his phone and called one of the numbers in his contact list.

'I wasn't going to act right away, but there's more at play now.' Izuru thought as he wanted for the reciever to pick up the call.

"Good evening, Sawada-san. What can I do for you on this starry night?"

"Hey, Kasumi. I wanted to ask something."

"Hm? What would that be?"

"Do you remember a year ago, around the time Aimi won the student council president election, when I gave you those papers the headmaster gave the council?"

"I didn't expect you to give the contracts any use. I'll take it that the situation with Ban-san took a dire turn."

"You can say that again. I need you to have one of the contracts done by friday. Is that fine with you?"

"The concept behind the contracts is simple, I can have it done by monday."

"No need. I don't need it that soon. Just take your time, friday's fine."

"Hai, hai. I'll have it prepared by then. There's still one problem though."

"Yeah, I get what you mean. You'll have to run it past the headmaster, so chances are he'll spill the beans about it to Aimi. Don't worry, I'll take care of things with Aimi whenever the situation calls for it, just get the contract done by friday."

"But why friday?"

"Don't worry about it."

'Very well. Good night, Sawada-san."

"See ya, Kasumi." As Izuru prepared to end the call, Kasumi's voice stopped him.

"One more thing, please."

"Hm? What's up?"

"...nothing, don't worry about it. See you monday, Sawada-san."

"Huh? Hey Kasumi, what's- She ended the call." Izuru sighed. 'The reason why I need the contract on friday instead of any other day is simple. I need to recover from my injuries, angering the guy who threw me at a wall like a plate before recovering would just be suicide. Nearly a week should be enough time for Kasumi to make the contract as convuluted as possible. With tons of pages and words, he'll skip reading it and go straight to signing it if it means he becomes King. I'm just relying on human nature, but it's the only thing going in my favour.'

"When Aimi became the student council president and the new student council was formed, the headmaster gave us three contracts to use in case problematic students should become a thing. The Dominion Contracts, despite their corny name, are just a way of getting rid of the bad apples without giving the image that there are students even Heiwa can't handle. Its concept is simple: give the problematic student a chance of getting what they want should they win in a fight, but if they lose, make them do ths last thing they'd wanna do and choose to drop out of Heiwa on their own. Since Aimi didn't saw any use on them and was against them to some degree, she entrusted me with the contracts, which I then gave to Kasumi. The contracts are only rumoured to exist, so the one that'd be used on friday is the first one of the three to be used."