With shoulders shaking like little earthquakes, she slumped against her drawer and collapsed on the carpet below her. Her arms wrapped tightly around her torso, constricting her ribcage so there was a tightening in her chest. Her heart hurt; it was pounding louder and louder in her eardrums—her heartbeat was the only thing her decrepit ears could hear at that precise moment and time. There was an emotion that she could not explain with words that had dunked her head into water and held it there until she'd drowned in a sea of her own pitch black unconsciousness. An invisible curtain of emotional pain shielded the outside world from the depraved chunk of meat so many men of Duel Academia christened as the most beautiful woman on the island. Inside the barrier resided a torn soul, literary clichés be damned, because that's what she was—a torn soul.

Tears and snot trickled off her wrists as she sobbed quietly into her arms, cursing herself over and over again for fate's irrationality of the previous hour. What had she been expecting, anyhow? Even after his seemingly mature upgrade via Yubel and Haou, beneath all that spiked hair and those green and orange eyes, Juudai was still a bumbling fool who would argue the fundamentals of reality with a tree. Subtlety didn't work on this kid, but then again, neither did bluntness. Juudai wouldn't have comprehended her feelings even if she had forthrightly said she'd loved him.

She wasn't rejected...because she never proposed. The opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference.

The truth was, Juudai never had the time nor spent the energy looking at girls in the crabwise angle most teenage boys did. When he looked at her, he saw a beautiful and proud duelist who loved the game and wasn't afraid to give it a hundred and ten percent during a match. But she was only beautiful because she was a proud duelist and loved dueling...because perhaps Juudai couldn't relate with her when it came to stuff like academic etiquette or accepting that your stomach is protesting you had enough to eat, but if it was one thing that they had in common, it was the undisputable fact they both had a love for dueling.

Problem was, Juudai loved dueling more than Asuka did.

Problem was, Juudai loved dueling more than Asuka too.

The world was an ironic place. Asuka felt a new surge of guilt course within her realizing that Manjyome, along with a dozen other guys throughout the ages, had dedicated countless of hours of their lives trying to win her heart, three years now and counting. Whenever a stray suitor from the batch attempted to court her, Asuka reacted to his gesture with the same mantra she had been reciting for eternity: 'I want the world to see me as a duelist…and not just a female. Why can't you see that?'

Why couldn'tshe have seen that she was a hypocrite?

After all this time, after saying those words over and over again ad nausem, she finally decided to hell with dueling—just this once—and wanted a special somebody to see her, not as a duelist, but as a dreamy, passionate girl, ready to give him the chain-bound jeweled heart many others would have forfeited their dignity for.

…fended them off…Mitsuo…Ayanokouji…Manjyome…

Except... Juudai, the one boy who had treated Asuka the way she said she wanted to be treated…was the one boy Asuka did not want to see her as just a person who was good at a card game.

…more…than a duelist…no…

She had such pride in her cards. Etoile Cyber. Tutu. Prima. Benten.

…what an…awesome combo…Doble Passé…how could I not remember this attack from the first time we dueled…those were his words…and…and…Mystical Space Typhoon…

She had used Doble Passé in her first year. She had used Doble Passé in every single duel she ever played up to today.

…how much have I grown these past years?

Juudai was the obvious case, but only the tip of the iceberg. Shou started out from the bottom of the well and moved up three ranks to the top dorm from working off determination, will-power and support from his brother and friends. Speaking of said boy, Ryou changed drastically having gone through hell and back, figuratively and literally, and experiencing the worst and best of both worlds, the opposite sides of the spectrum. Then there was Rei, who got over her crush for Ryou within a year while becoming the first girl to enter Osiris Red in the history of the academia...

Of course who could forget Hayato, an old friend who had matured the quickest out of all of them; he had left the very first year to pursue his dreams. Hayato's transformation was nearly halted by Chronos de Medici, who was the Big Bad back in the day, but turned out to be alright after all. Chronos' attitude towards his students evolved greatly after encountering numerous situations that hadn't been listed in the principal's syllabus and had required him to make sacrifices in order to protect the lives of his students... Where as Napoleon learnt what it took to be a good father...

Edo...Saiou...Kagemaru...even O'brien had fledged in both personality and viewpoints in the short period of time he'd been here, for crying out loud. Throughout these three years, all the people around her grew up and blossomed wonderfully, swapping their old decks for new ones to signify the change, while she remained frozen in a stasis of never moving time.

And she had almost forgotten: Manjyome. Heaven knows how Manjyome—

"Tenjoin-kun, here's the letter…"

Asuka looked up at the sound of the voice and gasped which quickly turned into a wet hiccup. Her bedroom door wasn't shut and opened with swift gracefulness at the touch of Manjyome's hand.

He halted. An instant later, he materialized in front of her, one knee dropped to the ground so that he was at her eye level.

"Tenjoin-kun—what's wrong—why are you crying?" he demanded. Robotic customary questions.

He gripped her shoulders and wrung her furiously. She felt his nails dug into her collarbone and winced. Her vision fell on his pale white knuckles which were shaking with restrained anger. His eyes blazed with rage that made her blood run cold at the mere thought of what it would have been like if Manjyome had been her enemy. Only a few people in the world could boast of rattling the cool and composed Tenjoin Asuka, and only once had Manjyome ever been on that list. But now...

"Tell me who did this to you. Who made you cry?" Manjyome hissed, his voice suddenly hushed and veiled with a promise of murder. "I'll make them cry."

Fear peaked initially, but was quickly replaced with gratefulness, followed by a wave of shame.

...after all this time...

Manjyome would have done anything for her.

...do I...deserve this?

She had rejected him time and time again. For dueling. For Juudai.

...but...

It hurt too much to think. Asuka looked at him and blinked away the big fat tears rolling down her cheeks. She swayed slightly, then she collapsed forward into his arms and buried her face into his chest. Taken aback, Manjyome hesitated momentarily before returning the embrace, shielding the only girl he had ever loved from the harsh realities that awaited her outside of her room.

"It's ok…it's ok…" he whispered, rocking her gently. "I'm here…Thunder's here to protect his girl…"

She wasn't his girl, though that meant nothing as of the current. Asuka suddenly felt an overwhelming rush of gratitude for the black-haired boy...because even if she didn't love him, it was Manjyome that was exerting his energy to make her feel better when she needed comfort the most, and not Juudai, and that was all that mattered right now.

Asuka closed her eyes and pressed her cheek against Manjyome's chest, listening to the steady tick-tock metronome of his heart.

"Everything will be alright now...I'm here..."

"…yes…you're here," she repeated softly. All she could hear was the beating of his heart. "You're here…"

That was all that mattered.