A Heart to Duel For; Yu-Gi-Oh! Protagonists x Reader

Chapter 15: Mangled Memories

The indoor sprinkler system went off, dousing us as everyone started screaming and shouting. Vanessa gave me an alarmed look and we both ducked over our cards and scooped our decks up before grabbing our bags and running with the others to the exit. There was no time to get our deck boxes, not that it mattered anyway. Those could be replaced. Our cards couldn't.

We joined the fray of students all scrambling to get outside, squeezing through impossibly tiny gaps and being shoved this way and that. But finally, we reached the outside. Masses of students were all huddled together against the wire fence that ran around the entire building. I ducked past a group of seniors and found enough space to stand and breathe. Vanessa pushed through and stopped next to me, breathing hard.

"Your cards okay?" I asked her once my racing heart calmed down, the adrenaline slowly leaving my body.

"Y-yeah. I think so." She looked down to check her cards. They were flecked with droplets of water on the clear plastic of the sleeve. She rubbed off the water with the edge of her dress while I stuffed my own cards in my pocket to wring out the water in my hair and dry my face. I darted an anxious glance up at the school.

What happened? I wanted to know. I couldn't see any smoke or other signs of a fire. And did everyone get out? The school was big; there were probably eight hundred or so of us, and that didn't include the number of teachers and other faculty members that were part of the school as well.

A few tense minutes passed by when the principal herself appeared, walking through the students. I saw her coming from the other corner of the school due to her height. "False alarm!" She was shouting as she passed through. "The system was triggered by accident. There's no fire. You can go to your fourth period class now."

Everyone around us started to head back inside once given the okay. However, going to class was not my priority, or Vanessa's. We shared a glance and sped off back to the cafeteria to find our deck boxes.

Once inside, we were met with a terrible sight. The cafeteria was completely trashed. There was food and garbage strewn all over the floor from the fallen trash bins and there was even a table that had been flipped on its side. We picked our way through the mess, gingerly stepping through to where we had been sitting before the mayhem, and got on with our search.

"Do you see them?" Vanessa asked, her voice muted from under the table.

"No," I said, unable to keep the frustration out of my voice. We had been looking for nearly ten minutes now. Our deck boxes had to be somewhere, and I said just as much to Vanessa. She agreed, but we were running out of time and they were nowhere to be found.

I sighed and slumped down at one of the tables. "Guess they're gone," I said sullenly. I was about to tell Vanessa we should go before our teacher gets mad at us when she shouted, "I found them!"

I shot up and ran over to her. "Where?"

Vanessa didn't answer my question. Instead, her voice dropped. "Oh," she said quietly. She plucked each deck box up with her pointer finger and thumb, one in each hand. They were broken beyond repair. Mine was split down the sides and there was a large scuff mark on it. Someone probably stepped on it. Vanessa's looked equally disgusting, the bright pink now covered in dirt and bits of food. The top was missing and it was squashed and creased horribly. Somehow, finding them was worse than letting them stay lost.

"We can clean them up." I tried to sound reassuring but my voice wavered. "They'll last until the end of the day."

She didn't say anything. Vanessa got up slowly and handed the deck boxes to me, her head low. She went to her bag and pulled out some tissues and we wrapped the boxes in them so we wouldn't have to touch them. When I gave her deck box back to her, she looked at me, her eyes blazing with anger. I blinked, taken aback at how furious she was. I almost thought she was mad at me for a second but then I realized she was mad about what happened to our boxes.

After we grabbed our things, Vanessa gestured for me to follow her to the girls bathroom. We tried washing the deck boxes off and taped up the broken pieces as best as we could. They still looked awful but it would have to do to keep our cards safe until we got home. I had a small tin that could serve as a deck box until I could buy a new one over the weekend.

I didn't want to think about what would have happened if we had left our cards behind too instead of just our deck boxes. If I ever saw Michael or Judgment Dragon torn up like our boxes. . .

I shook my head, not wanting to finish that thought and looked over at Vanessa.

"I can't believe an idiot would step on our deck boxes," she said furiously. "How stupid do you have to be to not see them on the floor?" Her voice was sharp but her hands were gentle as she slipped her cards into her own crudely taped deck box. She frowned as some of the tape came loose and pressed it back in place.

I just nodded absentmindedly. "Very stupid." I pursed my lips as I looked down at my deck box. All those memories gone because of a dumb accident. I had hoped the box would last a few more years before I had to throw it away and get a new one. New deck boxes were always strange; they were too sharp at the corners and stiff on the flap, not to mention they smelled acrid when they were first opened, a terrible stench of plastic and rubber. I wrinkled my nose at just the thought of having to smell it again.

"Are you done?" Vanessa's voice snapped me out of my thoughts, looking at me intently.

"Yeah, let's go," I said. I hastily put my deck box away in my bag, giving it a last look and quiet prayer to hold itself together for a few more hours and then we were off to class, a heavy silence between us.