"Excuse me."

Yuusaku looks up at the youth standing next to his table. Tall, dark-haired and staring at him through a set of golden eyes. He had been too deep in thought to notice his approach.

"Can I help you?" Yuusaku asks while inwardly sighing. After a long day without a single customer, the moment Kusanagi-san steps away is the moment one decides to show up.

After a beat, the other boy looks from him back to the van with Kusanagi's horrible logo plastered over the side and then back at Yuusaku again. His gaze is expectant. "I'd like to order a hotdog."

Yuusaku stares at him flatly, holding his gaze for probably longer than it is socially acceptable. But unlike with his classmates, the youth merely stares back. Eventually, Yuusaku breaks off the staring contest and turns back to his screen, considering it for a moment before locking his laptop. He also considers telling him he doesn't actually work here but ultimately reconsiders.

One, Kusanagi's business isn't doing well enough that Yuusaku can turn away his customers. Two, Yuusaku doesn't want to explain why he's hanging out at a hotdog stand with no customers when his uniform clearly says he should be in school. And three, the sooner he gives this guy what he wants, the sooner he can get back to work.

He stands slowly, meandering over behind the counter and pulls on one of Kusanagi's spare aprons and then stares down at the empty grill. Since the place had been all but dead, there isn't any that he can just reheat. Yuusaku sighs outwardly this time as he reaches down to grab a fresh package of frozen sausages. He has seen Kusanagi do this hundreds of times, so surely it can't be that hard?

It turns out that, yes, it can definitely be that hard, especially with the gold-eyed youth watching him like a hawk the entire time.

"Is it supposed to be that colour?" he interrupts while Yuusaku is trying to remember where they kept the buns. He looks back over at the dogs and frowns. Ah. He had forgotten to turn it.

Yuusaku shrugs, scooping up the sausage and stuffing it into a bun before unceremoniously shoving it at him. The youth glances down. The hotdog is blackened and shriveled and still half-frozen, the condensation turning the untoasted bun soggy.

"Here you go," Yuusaku says, his face immaculately blank. "Condiments are on the side."

Slowly, Yuusaku's hapless customer looks down at the world's saddest hotdog and then back up at him, his face equally blank. After another long, stilted silence with neither of them moving an inch, he surprises Yuusaku by reaching out to take it.

"Thank you," he says, holding out a couple of coins that Yuusaku automatically takes without thinking. Their fingers brush together and they awkwardly jerk away.

Here, Kusanagi might have cheerfully called out for him to enjoy his meal or to come visit again but Yuusaku says nothing as he watches him leave. The sapphire waves crash against the rocks as his silhouette fades into the distance until nothing remained from that encounter except for a couple coins clenched in his fist and a lingering sense of awkwardness.

"Hey, I'm back." Yuusaku's head snaps up to see Kusanagi waving sheepishly as he strolls up with an armful of supplies that probably won't see any use today. "Sorry for making you mind the truck. Did any customers come by?"

Yuusaku briefly entertains the idea of telling the truth, but that would involve recounting that supremely awkward encounter and admitting that he can't do something as simple as grill a hotdog.

"No," he says.

In between chasing down false leads and unsettling rumours about duellists falling into inexplicable comas, that awkward encounter had fallen into the back of Yuusaku's mind. Buried among the everyday drivel of homework assignments he doesn't bother to do and the myriad of other awkward encounters that came with the territory of having no social skills to speak of.

Until Yuusaku catches sight of the odd youth with striking gold eyes and dangling earrings slowly meandering towards him through the crowd at Kusanagi's usual spot. For some reason, he freezes like a rabbit caught in the headlights.

After a few seconds of outright staring, Yuusaku shakes himself out of his daze. There are plenty of good reasons for someone to be wandering around the busiest part of town-

The youth comes to a stop right in front of the truck.

Yuusaku isn't sure if he's glad Kusanagi had stepped away again or not. He inwardly sighs again and wonders if he's here to make a complaint or to threaten to put Cafe Nagi out of business for selling him a shitty hotdog.

"... can I help you."

He phrases it too flatly for it to be a question but the youth seems unbothered as he continues to stare at him with unreadable gold eyes. Yuusaku stares back, noting the other boy is slightly taller which forces him to tip his chin up.

"I'd like to order a hotdog," his unwanted customer finally says.

For a moment, Yuusaku wonders if his audio feed is malfunctioning until he remembers he's not in Link VRAINs anymore. The look he sends him is just short of incredulous, but he sighs. It's probably too late for him to say he doesn't work here.

Mechanically, Yuusaku tosses another frozen sausage onto the grill, only marginally knowing what he's doing. The dark-haired youth with the staring problem is unabashedly watching his every move again with sharp, aquiline eyes. Not one to be intimidated, Yuusaku stares back wordlessly with only the sound of the crowd and the sizzling of his overcooked sausage filling the silence. This time, he at least remembers to grill both sides, even if he hadn't gotten the timing right.

The hotdog Yuusaku holds out this time still looks like shriveled charcoal shoved into a limp bun but at least it's probably all the way cooked. Green eyes lock with gold, almost challengingly.

"...It's a bit burnt," the youth comments on the obvious after another drawn out silence and Yuusaku wonders why he had expected anything different when it had been obvious that Yuusaku had never grilled a hotdog in his life.

But instead of making a fuss, the youth accepts it with another polite "Thank you", inadvertently brushing Yuusaku's fingers again when he goes to pay. This time, the touch lingers longer than necessary and Yuusaku finds himself absently touching his hand long after the youth fades back into the crowd.

"Why do you toast it?"

Kusanagi-san blinks at him with a bewildered expression, his hands frozen around a pair of tongs. "Toast what?" Yuusaku gestures at a pair of hotdog buns lying neatly on the grill and his expression clears and a grin breaks across his face. "Ah. That's to stop the bread from getting soggy. And if you lightly butter it first, you get this really nice texture. Why do you ask? Could it be you're interested in a real part-time job here?"

Yuusaku shrugs noncommittally. "It's not like you can actually afford to pay me."

"Ouch, harsh," Kusanagi-san laughs. "But fair. What brought on the sudden curiosity?"

"No reason."

"Ohh? Is there something you're not telling us, Yuusaku- chan ?" Yuusaku's expression pinches as his annoying hostage chooses this moment to materialize, the lines on his face curved up into what is clearly a shit-eating grin. "Maybe it's because of that earring-guy who keeps-"

"Leave the jokes to just your face."

Yuusaku ignores Kusanagi's bewildered expression as he brutally mutes the Ignis.

The rumours of comatose duelists are no longer just rumours. Media outlets have even given it a name; Another World Syndrome. Yuusaku stays up every night, hunched over his laptop researching while Ai makes a nuisance of himself in the background. He sleeps through class and no one bothers to talk to him, with Shima Naoki being the occasional annoying exception.

And throughout all of it, almost like clockwork, the gold-eyed youth continues to show up at the truck to order one of his terrible hotdogs. His visits were sporadic but regular, and he manages to miss Kusanagi almost every time. Occasionally, he makes small talk as the sausages sizzle and Yuusaku occasionally decides to reply with more than a pointed silence. He never lingers for long afterward, is never anything but unfailingly polite and always has exact change. Always watching Yuusaku with those intense gold eyes and Yuusaku finds himself watching him back.

Entirely out of suspicion.

One, if he had been a Cafe Nagi regular, he could understand the frequent visits, but prior to that awkward encounter by the cliffs, he had never once seen this man before. (Well, Yuusaku doesn't actually care enough to be good with faces but he's positive he wouldn't forget a face like his .) Two, no one possessing tastebuds would deliberately subject themselves to his culinary disasters that can and has made Kusanagi-san weep. Which therefore leads him to number three: this guy must be after something else. Specifically him.

Yuusaku's brow furrows as his mind races across the possibilities, slowly veering off into the territory of paranoia. He can only think of several reasons why he would catch a stranger's interest and most of them aren't good. As far as his public records show, Fujiki Yuusaku is an utterly unremarkable student in the bottom half of his class and therefore shouldn't be attracting any kind of scrutiny at all.

Could he be Hanoi? No, Yuusaku wouldn't have done anything to give away his identity. No one would connect PLAYMAKER's true identity to a bored looking teenaged boy who shouldn't be anywhere near a grill.

A faint burning smell alerts him that he's left the sausage cooking for too long again and he picks it up with the tongs. He turns it over critically, noting that this time it's only blackened on one side. Yuusaku lowers it into a lightly toasted bun and loads it up with a little bit too much filling. The end product doesn't look so much like a hotdog than a victim of a grisly crime scene with all the ketchup running down the sides but the youth still doesn't complain.

Instead, he glances up at him and the corners of his lips slowly curve up. "Thank you," he says and for some reason, Yuusaku's breath catches, like a glitch in the program. The youth's hand is warm as it closes over his. Long, elegant fingertips brushing against his skin, deftly closing his fingers over the change he presses into his palm.

"...enjoy your meal," Yuusaku hears himself say and it takes him a second to ascertain that yes the words had come from his own mouth and no it couldn't have been Ai's attempt at mimicry again since he had left his duel disk at home. Whatever the cause, he regrets it instantly when the youth's smile widens he can read the amusement leaking from his normally blank visage.

"I intend to."

Hanoi recruits more and more people; thugs and mooks with only a modicum of talent but their overpowered cards make them more than a match for the average duelist. Yuusaku sleeps even less, especially after watching the haunting footage of someone being swallowed up like Blue Angel had been.

The only highlight of his week had been letting Shima Naoki make an ass out of himself, but the rest of it had been frustratingly unsatisfying.

Between researching and hacking, Yuusaku doesn't spend his time perfecting his grilling; carefully turning his sausages until they're cooked to a beautiful golden brown and measuring the fillings down to the precise gram. He doesn't do any of that because the youth with the intense gold eyes and no tastebuds stops showing up at Cafe Nagi.

By the time the Hanoi launches their all-out attack on Link VRAINS, Yuusaku learns to stop looking for him.