Disclaimer: Futuristically not mine

A/N: There are certain fanfic clichés I've always wanted to try out to see if I could do anything interesting with them. Consider this a sort of experiment: my take on the 'next generation' formula. This fic sort of follows on from Stone Tablets and Cherry Blossoms, but you don't need to have read that to understand this one (unless you'd like to know why I ended up calling this character by one of the most unoriginal names in all of fandom).

The Cherry Blossom Monologues

© Scribbler, February/March 2009.

A father is always making his baby into a little woman. And when she is a woman he turns her back again. -- Enid Bagnold

I don't believe this. I do not believe this.

It isn't bad enough I look like the human equivalent of a used cotton bud. It isn't bad enough the hottest guy in school – the guy, incidentally, on whom I have a frankly embarrassing crush – has known me since we were in diapers, and remembers the time when I was five and ran around his yard in my Wonder Woman underoos claiming I could fly. It's not even bad enough that he has talked about that incident while Yoko Tenjo was in earshot. It isn't (and this is pretty bad) even bad enough I have the most embarrassingly lovey-dovey (yack!) parents on the whole planet. Oh no, none of that is bad enough. Apparently I also have to now deal with my father going on TV.

To play a children's card game.

In front of the whole nation.

I should just start digging now. By the time they broadcast it I should have a hole big enough to use as my grave.

Maybe I should fill in some of the blanks. You see, my dad? A bit of a celebrity. Or at least he used to be way back in the dim and distant past. When he was around my age he was some big shot gamer freak. Not like tiddlywinks or Space Invaders or anything – nothing small time. He wasn't president of his school's Chinese Checkers Appreciation Society or head fundraiser for the Hopscotch Club. Even that is too much to ask for. No, my dad was a world champion.

Of a children's card game.

When he was sixteen.

Seriously.

Although maybe it wasn't that he was at an age when he should've known better. He won big competitions with even bigger prizes, got on TV and was really famous for a while. Actually, a lot of people took him remarkably seriously, considering … well, that it was a freaking children's card game. He didn't much like doing interviews, but my mom kept all these old magazines with features on him and I've read them all. Can you believe I actually used to think it was cool? That was when I was a lot younger, of course. I mean, my dad the duellist, cool? As if. Least cool man in the known universe next to my algebra teacher, who owns a ginger toupee and so can never be overtaken in terms of un-coolness.

Thank goodness I finally realised my mistake and learned about how dorky the things my dad did really are.

Unfortunately, I realised it a little late. As in, nobody told me until after I'd already proclaimed his 'achievements' to half my high school class, using the kind of proud and happy voice little kids use when showing Mommy their crappy macaroni art. Can you believe I genuinely didn't know how uncool gamers are? Seriously! Nobody in lower school told me. I guess they thought it was cute, or else I was just so entertaining they let me carry on.

Nowadays I know better, of course, but Yoko Tenjo (a.k.a. Skinny McBitchlet) never lets me forget my greenhorn mistakes. Some days I think I'll never be able to claw my way out of the well of uncoolness-by-proxy that I fell into on my first day at Domino High.

Yes, my first friggin' day! I mean, come on, can't my peers cut me a little slack?

Apparently not. Mercy is in short supply with the teenagers of Domino City. Just look at Ryu. It's like he hasn't even noticed how bad things have gotten for me. Considering the aforementioned shared history right back to diaperdom, you'd think he'd have a little more restraint about parading Skinny McBitchlet around on his arm whenever I'm around (I've known rabid dogs with more mercy than her, but he must think the sun shines out of her butt, because he's never without her these days). He's never actually holding her, or trying to grope her or anything. Mostly he's eating or trying to do his homework as he walks, but she's always clinging to his arm and the message is so clear it makes me want to vomit: Steer clear. He's mine. And I don't care if he was your best friend first, Mutou.

Ryukept a lid on his own dad's uncool card-game past, and so was able to carve out his own niche in the cutthroat hierarchy of high school. I used to think he was just waiting until he had enough cool points that hanging out with me will transform my uncoolness-by-proxy into coolness-by-proxy, but I find that hard to believe these days. Last summer Ryu's family went to stay at the beach and he came back with actual arm muscles and calves like watermelons from swimming and running up and down the dunes all day. The swim team coach was gagging for him to join, and as soon as Ryu went to his first meet the girls have been all over him. No way would he want to spoil that by lingering by my side.

So instead I'm forced to watch him from a distance, my feelings forever unrequited because … well, I think I've made my point. Actually, I've liked Ryu since he was so scrawny he could turn sideways and you'd lose sight of him behind a piece of bamboo, but even though I've known him longest and he didn't used to be such a total jerk-off (he has always been a jackass, which his mom says he inherited from his dad and his dad says he inherited from his mom, but he only became a jerk-off after hitting puberty), I apparently no longer have any claim to him, nor even any right to hang out with him, because I'm 'sooooooo uncool'.

Ooh, I hate Yoko Tenjo. And I'm talking lasers-out-of-my-eyes type hatred.

Recently, however, it seems like people have been forgetting about all that. Skinny McBitchlet is so warm for Ryu's form she seems to have forgotten about keeping me in my place when I'm not expressly in her line of sight. Some of the other kids have actually started being decent to me. I even finally got up the courage to join the drama club as more than just a member of the props department, and was thinking about trying out for the latest school play now the danger of being booed off the stage has lessened. Hope was dawning, and I was ready with my beach towel and sunscreen to get a good tan in its rays.

And then this happens.

Apparently it's the anniversary of some big contest called 'Battle City' (Battle Shitty, more like), and suddenly the whole world has gone nostalgic for Duel Monsters. Kaiba Corp. announced last week that it's going to run a special commemorative contest and invite all the original contestants so they can duke it out and see who still has the edge. All the media attention has made Duel Monsters cool in the way other totally uncool things like rah-rah skirts, hipsters and David Hasselhoff suddenly became cool again when they enough time had passed for them to be called 'retro stylish'.

Brilliant, I thought when I heard this. Maybe I won't have to crawl out from under my stigma after all. Maybe me talking about it being cool before will just make people think I was cool before my time. My big mouth could even work in my favour for once.

Nu-uh, no way; because even if I could somehow swing that, there's no way having one's father go on TV to play a game designed for little kids will ever be considered cool. Not even if he's doing it as a one-time special thing for charity. Not even if, as far as dads go, he hasn't fallen into the traps of getting a pot belly, or wearing cardigans, or losing his hair.

Ha! That's rich. My dad, lose his hair? Don't make me laugh! A thermo-nuclear explosion wouldn't singe that 'do. I know because guess who inherited it? I wish I'd gotten my mom's gene for big boobs instead. I can go through a whole can of hairspray and still look like I escaped from a lab that makes mutants by crossing humans with pineapples. Plus, it grows so fast I'd spend all my money on hairdresser fees and mangled scissors if I tried to get it cut all the time. Mostly I just let it grow long in the hope it'll eventually weight itself down and trail down my back like some beautiful ringleted waterfall, but so far all I've managed is a flopped-over 'style' that makes my head look twice as wide as the rest of my body.

I may have to move to Siberia. Maybe they've never heard of Duel Monsters there.

I'm just laying back on my bed and contemplating whether I should mail myself to Novosibirsk (that's the capital of Siberia, thank you very much Mr. Gave-Me-A-Stupid-F-in-Geography Yukimura), or steal my parents' credit card and fly first class as my recompense for this humiliation, when my bedroom door opens. I quickly grab my pillow and hold it over my face, so I don't see who it is, but I can guess.

The bed depresses. "Sakura, honey, I know you're not really trying to suffocate yourself."

"I might be. I'd be perfectly justified."

"I think you're overreacting."

"I'm not."

"Sakura -"

"Leave it out, Mom. My social life isn't exactly stellar as it is, but this is going to kill it stone dead." I remove the pillow to emphasise. "Stone. Dead."

My mom is still really pretty. I get my blue eyes and hair colour from her, which is a great relief. Even if I have to deal with my dad's style, at least my follicles didn't go the piebald route like his. However, this is pretty much where the resemblance between me and my mom ends. She's curvy. I'm like an ironing board with two pills on it. She's tall. I can still get child's admission at the movies. She's good-looking, for a mom (although I would strangle any boy at school who called her a MILF), and I already told you that I look like a used cotton bud when you see me in silhouette – the best way to see me, in my opinion.

Mom gives me one of her I'm-trying-to-be-understanding smiles. I have many, many 'aunts' and 'uncles' I'm not actually blood-related to (thank goodness, otherwise having a crush on Ryu would be all new kinds of pathetic, not to mention icky). They all say she perfected this look on them. The thing is, to them there's no 'trying to be'. They all seem to think my mom's, like, understanding personified – provided she's not applying it to herself, of course. Uncle Jounouchi's favourite story is how she and my dad knew each other for, like, years before they realised they were totally in love with each other. It'd be a romantic story and give me hope about Ryu if it wasn't, y'know, about my parents and all. That\really sucks the romance out of even the most fairytale-like story.

"You know, you've really upset your father," Mom says softly.

"Good." Actually, not so good. I hate upsetting my dad. He's embarrassing, but he's still my dad, y'know? And I do love him. I'd just rather not be seen in public with him unless we're both wearing masks, balaclavas, dark clothes and it's the middle of a blackout.

"You don't mean that."

"Mom, what did you come in here for? Because if it's to convince me I should be proud of him or something, you can forget it. Not happening. Nu-uh. No way José."

Mom sighs. "You really should speak to him. Contrary to what you seem to think, he hasn't agreed to this just to embarrass you."

"Oh, we've moved way beyond that description. Calling me 'sweetheart' when he drops me off at school is embarrassing. Making me buy the Tampons at a separate cash register when we go grocery shopping is embarrassing. Letting Uncle Jounouchi give him a noogie when we go with Ryu's family to Pizza Hut is embarrassing. This? This is way, way beyond just embarrassing. This is the city of Total Humiliation, population: me."

"Are you forgetting that he isn't the only one who has agreed to this duel? What has Ryu said about his parents? Surely he's in the same boat as you."

"That would involve him actually speaking to me, which he doesn't do at school."

"Really?"

"Not since Yoko Tenjo superglued herself to his side. She barely lets him get a word in edgeways when I'm around, and he isn't exactly champing at the bit to stop her. I barely see him outside school anymore now he spends all his time at the pool, too."

"Yoko Tenjo?" I can see my mom flicking through her mental account of names and faces. "The girl you spilled yakisoba over on your first day at school?"

Okay, so maybe I forgot to mention that minor detail about why Skinny McBitchlet hates my guts so much and never wants me to rise about the level of pariah. But honestly, who the heck wears Jimmy Choos to school?

According to my parents, school is a lot more laid-back than when they went there, even though I know from seeing old photos that it wasn't exactly rigid if my dad was allowed to wear chains and a freaking dog collar. We still have to wear uniforms and everything, but unlike a lot of schools we're allowed to personalise it.

A lot of girls wear the whole nine yards of jewellery – bangles, necklaces, earrings, anklets, armbands and whatever else they've stabbed themselves with underneath those horrible pink blazers (or under their skirts, in the case of Toki Matsura, who was telling her friends all about it while I was trapped in a stall in the girls' bathroom). Girls are allowed to have their hair as they want, although the rules say this is 'within reason'. Not that many teachers enforce this. They were all emos and chavs and punks and stuff when they were young, so they're really pleased with the resurgence of fashions they recognise. They pretend they're not, but they so are. Mrs. Tokimi was so thrilled when the skiv sub-culture resurrected Burberry that she never said a word about Yoko Tenjo's crowd all wearing huge Burberry hair accessories, even though they could barely see the vid-screen at the front of class through them.

What goes on our feet is up to us, too. I'm more of a sneakers girl myself (I sprained an ankle the one time I tried to wear stilettos at Aunt Shizuka's wedding and ended up benching myself all evening while Ryu danced with Oki Kajiki). Even so, on my first day at Domino High I dutifully wore the brand new pair of black patent leather shoes my grandmother got for me. She's a little absent-minded these days and bough them in my mom's size, forgetting that I'm a lot smaller in the foot department (just like pretty much every other department – waaaah). Consequently I had to stuff cotton wool in the toes and flip-flopped to a lot of my classes. By lunchtime I'd sworn never to wear the wretched things again. Unfortunately for me, the shoes must've, like, heard me or something, because they chose that moment to attack and make me stumble in the cafeteria – right when I was carrying some delicious, piping hot, noodles-swimming-in-sauce-and-mayonnaise-and-dripping-with-grease-just-the-way-I-love-them yakisoba.

I never even knew how much Jimmy Choos cost until Skinny McBitchlet started screaming at me. She totally freaked me out, so I babbled something about how wearing expensive and irreplaceable footwear to school was stupid anyway. Hey, she'd backed me into a corner. Not literally, you understand, but I was already in a lot of pain from my own stupid shoes, and one of the other things I inherited from my mom is a wicked temper. Apparently my mom is one of the only things Uncle Jounouchi is frightened of (the others being zombie movies and a premenstrual Aunt Mai).

This response, I quickly discovered, was social suicide. Yoko Tenjo is a year older than me, and Queen Bee of Domino High. The whole thing about my dad and Duel Monsters was just the icing on the cake for her, at least as far as my payment for a ticket into Club Snub was concerned.

"I never would've figured Ryu as her type," Mom muses.

"What type? He's a buff guy and she's a Quad B."

"A what?"

A roll my eyes. "Get a clue, Mom. Quad B." I say it slowly to help her out.

"Is that anything like a Queen Bee?"

"No, although she's that as well. Quad B, as in she has the four Bs that make her desirable to the average teenage male – she's a Beautiful Big-Boobed Babe. This terminology is common knowledge among the pubescent set, which I know isn't exactly the circle you move in, so tell me if I'm going too fast for you."

Mom slaps me playfully on the stomach. "Cheeky. You could live in a doghouse out in the yard instead of in this lovely room, you know."

"Yeah right. You'd crack in five minutes and let me back inside."

See, this is the thing about my mom: she already knows how I feel about Ryu, so I can call him buff in front of her and not want to roll into a foetal ball of shame. There's no point in trying to keep secrets like crushes from her. She just seems to automatically know about them already, and she's actually pretty easy to talk to about stuff like that. She gives solid advice, even if her idea of a good first date is taking a guy to a museum. Since my dad is an archaeologist I grew up around museums a lot. Trust me, they're really not all that. Certainly not date material, let alone my first-date location of choice.

"As long as you're with someone you love, anywhere seems romantic," she said to me once, when I was watching High School Musical XI and lamenting the fact that my own prom will probably be as romantic as an orthopaedic shoe full of pus from burst blisters. "You'd be surprised what being with the right person can do to change your perspective. Even the middle of a desert can seem like a lush paradise."

"Yeah, right. Sure Mom. How about when Dad comes to me panicking that he doesn't know what to do for your anniversary, I recommend a lovely dinner for two in a chemical toilet? Then we'll see how many romantic vibes you can squeeze out of that theory."

She just looked at me, all sad and kind of disappointed, which was way depressing. The only thing worse is probably my Dad's puppy-dog eyes. You have not known how big a fungus you can feel until he has turned those puppy-dog eyes on you. I'm the only girl I know whose parents discipline her almost entirely through her own self-reproach.

But not this time. I refuse to feel guilty. Reeeefuuuuuse.

I sigh. "C'mon, Mom, you were a teenager once. A long time ago, admittedly, but surely you can still remember what it's like enough to understand my pain? Didn't Grandma ever embarrass you?"

"My youth wasn't that long ago," Mom says, a little indignant, but immediately reaches over and moves the pillow all the way off my face so she can get a better look at me. "I think you should speak to your father. Ask him why he agreed to this duel. Haven't you stopped to think why he's never done anything like this before? There have been plenty of offers from people who'd love for him to duel in public again, but he turned them all down. All," she adds, flicking the tip of my nose with her index finger, "except this one. You should think about that for a second before you go back to complaining about how the world is conspiring against you."

I pout at her. Yeah, I'm not ashamed to admit it. My lower lip sticks out and I glare a little, but the seeds of what she's saying have already begun to uncurl inside me. It's true, my dad has never agreed to this sort of thing before. I would've thought he'd gotten over the whole Duel Monsters thing if he didn't keep getting out the photos albums of when he and Mom were in school. I guess it's a little odd that he's pulled a one-eighty this time.

Oh man, why can't I have parents who just yell at me so I can hide in my room and play angry chick music? Why do they always have to be so … so reasonable!?

"Okay," I say begrudgingly. "I'll talk to him. But I promise nothing."

"Whatever you say, honey."

I prop myself up on my elbows. "Stop sounding like you already know what's going to happen."

"Why would I?"

"I don't know, do I? I don't have the gift."

"What gift?"

"The gift of reading exactly what dad will do, say or think in response to any given situation."

Mom laughs. "Sakura, I'm many things, but I'm not psychic."

"Maybe not, but you know the inside of his head pretty much better than he does himself. Just don't go thinking you know mine that well too."

For a second Mom looks shocked. I'm not sure why. I go back over what I've said. Nothing strikes me as particularly cruel or hurtful, just the usual guff I come out with under the umbrella of my rights as a teen to be as bratty as I like and blame it on my hormones. Then she shakes her head and smiles at me, but there's something in it that wasn't there a second ago. She looks sort of sad for some reason.

"I don't think I can claim to know the inside of your father's head better than anyone else, sweetheart. I'll send him up. Or do you want to come downstairs?"

I flop backwards onto my bed. "He can visit me here. I'll grant him access to my inner sanctum."

"Very gracious of you."

"Yeah, especially since he's intent on ruining the future of my social life. My inner sanctum may be where I'll be spending every Saturday night until graduation!" I call after her, but she's already gone.

I grunt and stare at the ceiling for a while, contemplating the conversation. I feel a lot less horrified than when Mom first knocked on the door, but I haven't been appeased. This is still the worst thing that could've happened – after Ryu getting Skinny McBitchlet preggers and having to marry her and live in a trailer before we're even out of high school, of course.

I'm just pondering the true awfulness of this thought (thanks, brain, now I've locked onto the mental image of Yoko Tenjo and Ryu having sex, which is totally not what my self-esteem or my battered heart need right now. I bet it'd be like having sex with a flight of steps, anyway. I've seen her hipbones in the communal showers after gym class, and they're scary), when there's another knock at my bedroom door. This time I don't bother covering my face with my pillow, but I do hug it to my front like a shield. I'm pretty disgruntled as my dad pokes his head into the room – hair entering a good few seconds before the rest of him, natch.

"Can I come in?"

"Sure," I mutter. "Do whatever you like. You will anyway."

Dad winces.

I tell myself to be strong. Do not back down. You will not feel guilty. You are still pissed off at him – justifiably pissed off. He is working to undermine whatever hopes you have of securing more friends than just Ryu at school. He's being incredibly selfish and not thinking of how humiliating this is going to be for you. Think of Skinny McBitchlet and the popular set; how much fun are they going to have at your expense over this? Life won't be worth living. Dad doesn't know what it's like to be bullied and alone except for one friggin' friend who keeps friggin' abandoning you all the time for a better offer. Show no mercy. Give no quarter. What are you, a man or a mouse?

Well, neither, actually; but the idea is the same!

"You're mad at me," Dad says softly.

"Mrrf."

"Sakura …"

"Mom says I should ask why you agreed to do it in the first place. Apparently I should withhold judgment about being mad until I've heard your side of the story – which had better be a real good story if it's going to make me feel better about becoming social poison again."

"You're not social poison. Ryu's your friend."

"When he can be bothered."

Unlike Mom, my dad doesn't know about my crush on Ryu. He and Ryu's dad are like this. I'm twisting my index and middle finger together right now, by the way. I'm sure Dad wouldn't tease me, but Uncle Jounouchi on the other hand … well, let's just say that Ryu has to get his cluelessness about the female psyche from somewhere. The only reason Aunt Mai married the guy is because she has enough self-confidence to sink a barge. Seriously, it's iron-clad; and talk about assertive. I guess she has to be in a household with two men for company, but still, Aunt Mai is the poster child for Independent Woman. No way could anything Uncle Jounouchi says, no matter how tactless or insensitive, ever really get to her. It can make her mad, but it can't make her stop loving him. Their arguments are like throwing a Molotov cocktail into a fireworks factory, but one that has the best insurance package on the planet.

"At least your parents don't kiss each other in public and act like they're still teenagers in love's first flush," I once said to Ryu.

"Wanna bet?" he replied grimly. "You've never seen them right after they get done 'making up'."

"Look, Dad," I continue before he can say anything about my outburst, "think about it from my perspective for a second. I have no friends – not really. Ryu doesn't count. I'm a loser. Everyone knows that hanging out with me is going to make them into targets for Yoko Tenjo and her cronies -"

"Who?"

Here we have it, ladies and gents: my father, the most oblivious man in the cosmos. "Yoko Tenjo, Dad. The girl who has been making my life miserable since the dawn of time?"

He frowns. "Would you like me to make an appointment to see the headmaster?" He totally, completely and utterly Does Not Get It.

"No! You already did that and it got my book-bag … look, Dad, you're missing the point." I really don't want to bring up the incident about the book-bag in the used toilet. It was years ago and it's kind of beside the point right now. "Ever since Yoko Tenjo stopped paying so much attention to me it's like I got a reprieve, y'know?" I shake my head. "Or maybe you don't know. You had Mom and Uncle Jounouchi and Uncle Honda when you were in school. The point is I was actually making headway with some of the other girls, but as soon as it comes out that you're …" I trail off. Abruptly I turn on my side to face away from him. Saying it out loud makes it sound even more pathetic. How do you tell your own father that you're ashamed of him because he's inhibiting your invitations out on a Saturday night? How do you admit that not only are your peers really that petty, but that you actually let that get to you more than your daughterly duty to love your parents unconditionally? "Just forget it. I'll join a convent or something."

"You're not Catholic."

"I'll convert."

He's silent for a long time after this. I know he hasn't left because I can hear him breathing. Eventually he steps forward, knocking into my giant teddy bear (seriously, it's bigger than I am, which isn't difficult for a person to be, but is pretty damn big for a stuffed animal). Ryu won the bear for me at the fair when we were in junior high and he was still nice. Dad grunts as he stumbles, but I still don't turn over.

"I'm sorry, Sakura," he says in this quiet voice that makes me listen even though he's practically whispering. My dad is a cheerful guy. He always seems to be smiling, and almost everyone he meets automatically likes him. It's like he emits a special friendship pheromone or something. But right now? Right now he sounds like he has just been told that the blood he donated to help people with leukaemia was sold for badly cut drugs that were used to poison a paraplegic five year old orphan whose dog also just got hit by a Mack truck driven by terrorists on their way to blow up a cancer-research lab. Or, y'know, something like that.

Dad sits down on my bed. I risk a look. He's facing away from me, kind of wringing his hands like he doesn't know how to say something.

"I had no idea you were so unhappy in school, Sakura. I wish you'd told me. I admit, when Mokuba Kaiba approached me about this duel I wasn't really thinking about you."

Ha! See? He even admits it.

"But then, I wasn't really thinking about myself, either."

Wait a minute; what?

"Huh?" I say, doing my best to appear the height of wit and intelligence - not.

"That sounds a little strange, doesn't it?" Dad glances my way, and for a second I meet his eyes. "You know that you're very important to me, don't you, Sakura? You and your mother are the most important things in my entire world. But I never thought I'd be a good father. The idea of having a child scared me so much I pretty much did all the things I shouldn't when your mother told me that's exactly what I was going to be. I panicked. Instead of staying with your mother to talk about it, I ran away. I went and got drunk for the first time in my life, and both Uncle Honda and Uncle Jounouchi had to carry me home."

Is he kidding? He barely touches alcohol. The nearest I've ever seen him to being shit-faced is his traditional slug of saké at New Year. "Is this supposed to be making me feel better? Because I'm not seeing the connection."

"Give me a second. It'll make sense. You see, I didn't realise at the time just how precious you were going to become to me. I had no idea that I could love you as much as I do. I've always had a habit of underestimating and misunderstanding my own feelings, not to mention denying them. Your mother is a perfect example – I wanted to be her friend, and then I wanted more than friendship from her, but it took years for me to realise I was allowed to want either, and even more to actually act on my feelings."

Da-ad! Stop with the mushy stuff already! Parents should never talk about their love-lives in front of their kids. Seriously. I want to believe the stork brought me, or that I was found in a reed basket floating down a Domino canal.

"When I was your age I was pretty much an outcast in school."

That makes me sit up straight. "What? You're kidding, right?"

"No. I was the geeky kid everybody made fun of or avoided – or beat up. Look up 'bottom feeder' and you would've found my picture. It was no wonder people called me 'Pukey Mutou'."

"Seriously? But you were, like, famous. Weren't people fighting to be your friend so they could, like, do interviews and get loads of money from magazines doing tell-all articles and stuff?"

"Before I was famous I was a regular kid, and as a regular kid I was a bottom-feeder. You think gamers are looked down on now? You have no idea. I was lucky if I could hold on to my lunch money for the first three steps inside the school gate, and I counted each day I didn't have my head swirlied in the toilet as a victory."

Whoa. I mean seriously. This casts a whole new light on … well everything. I always assumed that Dad has been tight with his friends since the very beginning. It never even occurred to me that he could be a discontented loner like yours truly.

Dad nods. "Do you remember the stories I used to tell you about the Pharaoh Atem?"

Yet another bizarre part of our family I should probably explain. You see, unlike most parents, mine didn't tell me fairytales at bedtime when I was a kid. They used to tell me ancient myths and legends, and about the kings and queens of the past and what they got up to. I'm not sure how that was supposed to help me sleep. Come to think of it, they should've been worried all that would warp me into some mini-psycho. Those kings and queens got up to some pretty icky stuff, after all. What if I'd wanted to be like Cleopatra and gone looking for asps the way other little girls want to be Cinderella and go looking for glass slippers? Then again … I guess fairytales are pretty violent as well, when you really look at them. The original ugly sisters cut up their feet and got blood in the prince's glass slipper, and the wicked queen in Snow White ate the raw heart she thought belonged to her stepdaughter so she could gain Snow White's beauty and youth. At least Cleopatra had the decency not to leave a mess for the servants to clean up.

"Sure I remember. He was the pharaoh whose name was scrubbed from the records until Aunt Isis rediscovered it, right? It was what made you want to be an Egyptologist."

"Not quite, but it certainly cemented my decision to specialise in that field."

"Is all this going to start making sense soon? I'm trying to join the dots, but instead of finding the hidden picture I'm getting a piece of modern art."

"The era in which Atem lived was when nobles and courtiers played the original game Duel Monsters is based on. You could say that both of my talents, Duel Monsters and Egyptology, can be traced back to that time period." Dad smiles thinly. "And to the Nameless Pharaoh." He shakes his head. "When you were growing up I'd already given up playing Duel Monsters. Several people tried to get me to play in tournaments and bigger arenas – one person kept challenging me even though I kept turning him down – but I wanted to concentrate on my career, and then on you and your mother. I wanted to be a good husband and father, and those things were more important to me than my fame as Duel Monsters World Champion."

"So what changed?" I ask sourly. "You wanted to wait until I was the exact age that finally saying yes would have the most devastating impact?"

Dad shakes his head. "I had a friend who played alongside me at Battle City. He was … he was probably closer to me than either your mother or Uncle Jounouchi."

"Really?" I guess I should be more shocked than suspicious, but frankly I smell a rat. "Then how come I've never heard of him?"

"I don't talk about him much. While you were growing up, your mother and I decided it'd be better for you to have as normal a childhood as possible. You talked about me playing Duel Monsters and her dancing so much already."

"Yeah, I was a regular blabbermouth."

"We didn't want you to get teased for talking about 'weird stuff', as she called it, and that old friend was so bound up in that part of our lives it was impossible to talk about one without the other."

"Huh?"

Dad exhales. "We decided to tell you about everything when you were old enough to understand it properly, as well as to understand its implications."

I watch his expression carefully. "Dad, I have no idea what you're talking about. What happened to this friend I've never heard you so much as mention before?"

That weird thin smile again. I don't like that smile. I've never seen it before and it looks terrible on Dad's face; like he's hiding something painful. "He's dead."

Okay, despite what I said about not giving in to guilt, I'm not a block of stone either. Dad would not lie about something like that. I can see where this is going. "So playing in this Battle City anniversary thing … you're doing it for him?"

"Something like that. He died a long time ago, but the fact he's dead now is … kind of my fault."

Forget shocked. I'm stunned. "Oh, Dad …"

Cue me feeling like the biggest heel on the planet. No, scratch that: the biggest heel on the biggest boot that has stepped in the biggest, smelliest, foulest load of dog poop from the biggest, most diarrhoea-stricken, fed-full-of-hot-curry dog in the universe.

And I'm not even exaggerating.

Dad gives a strange half-snort. "Well maybe that's being a little overdramatic," he says quickly. "I didn't murder him or anything like that. But regarding the events that led up to us losing him, I've always nursed a feeling that maybe if I'd done something other than what I did, he'd still be here, even though I know that, rationally, there's no conceivable way I could have done anything different. I'm not making myself very clear, am I? This is hard to explain, sweetheart. It's … complicated."

"But you still miss him?" I say wretchedly.

"Of course I do. He was my friend."

"And you never mentioned him before because of me?"

"Now don't you go giving yourself any guilt complex over this. I'm allowed to have secrets, just the same as you. Strange as it is to think, I did actually have a life before I became 'Dad', and things happened in my life as a duellist that never came into my life as a husband and father. I designed it to be that way."

"It sounds to me like you're compartmentalising yourself, Dad. That's not healthy."

He blinks at me. "Where do you pick up things like that? Sometimes you sound older than Grandpa."

"Dad, elementary school kids sound older than Great-Grandpa Mutou. He sings along with Rinko the Raccoon on the infomercials about road safety. He even knows the Looky-Lefty-Looky-Righty dance. Have you ever watched him dancing with his cane? He looks like a windmill whose rotors have fallen off." I'm attempting to inject some levity into the conversation. It sinks like a rock thrown into a lake of molasses.

"You know," Dad says softly, "I always loved that you admired my old rep as a duellist. Whenever I caught you looking at those old magazines, or pretending with my Duel Disk, I'd get a little happy glow. Sometimes, more than anything, I wanted to do some flashy one-off duel just so I could impress you. I know I don't have the most exciting job compared to your schoolmates, and I don't really measure up to their dads -"

"You do so!"

He raises a palm. "Let me finish. I'll admit, I liked being your hero. It was flattering. I didn't want to spoil it by telling you about my less glorious days. You're my little girl, and for a while I was cool in your eyes. Then you got to high school and became so introverted, and you seemed so angry all the time. Suddenly all talk of Duel Monsters upset you, so I just stopped talking about it and put everything away. I thought it was because you were a teenager now, and so everything about your parents was automatically embarrassing. Every little girl finally outgrows seeing her father as her hero. They get new heroes and better people to look up to. I wasn't hurt."

He's totally lying, but I can't say anything. There's this funny tightness in my throat all of a sudden.

Dad shrugs. "I figured I'd wait until you were older to explain some of the things that … well, that made me who I am. But this charity duel upset you so much, I felt it was time you learned some of the truth."

"Mom thought so too?"

"Mom too."

"Did Mom know your friend?"

"Oh yes. She had a crush on him for a long time."

"She what?"

"He's actually the one who went on a date with her to the museum."

"But I thought that was you!"

"I did say it was complicated." He sighs. "Look, Sakura, forget the details for a minute. What it boils down to is this: I don't want you to end up the way I was in high school, alone and friendless, and feeling like I couldn't talk to anyone about my problems. I thought Ryu was a better friend than he apparently is."

"Ryu's not that bad," I say, feebly defending him. Or at least, I want to add, he used to be great, and he might be again someday, when he gets his head out of his own butt and starts acting like a normal human being again instead of a hormonal eating-machine in swimming trunks.

Because the truth is, as mad as I am at Ryu … I don't hate him for ditching me. We've got a lot of history together, and I can't just throw that away because he discovered girls and apparently hasn't registered me as one. It's hard to stay mad at someone who once found you crying on your front step because you'd locked yourself out (give me a break, I was, like, seven years old and worried my parents would be mad at me for opening the front door at all when they'd told me not to), and took you into his house for pick-me-up pancakes, then ended up setting the frying pan on fire, so you had to save him by putting it out. It's hard to tell yourself you hate someone who always used to share each and every bit of candy he's ever had with you, and still leaves half a Choc Fulla Delight bar on top of your shoes for you to find before you leave school every day. And if I said that I can maintain being angry at him when our families go out for dinner together and he does that dorky Victory Dance because he beat his dad to the last slice of pizza … well, I'd be lying.

I'm not happy that his new lease of life as a cool kid doesn't have so much room for me as his old life did, but I guess that's just how it is with friends sometimes. They grow up and grow away from each other. That doesn't change how things used to be, or how they might be again someday because of that shared history. Plus, on a more shallow level, it's hard to stay mad at someone who looks as good as Ryu does with his shirt off.

What? When did I ever say I'm not shallow?

"Regardless," Dad goes on, "it's not what I want for you. So if you're really that unhappy with me being in this Battle City re-enactment, I'll contact Mokuba and withdraw from the duel."

Oh man. Oh man!

I gnaw on my lower lip. "Dad, you do realise what kind of position that puts me in, right? If I say no, go ahead and do it … well, I've already explained that part. But if I say yes, withdraw, then I'm going to feel all kinds of guilty because you're doing this to commemorate your dead best friend. It'll be like I'm spitting all over his memory, as well as how you felt about him – and the way Mom felt." I pause. "And Uncle Jounouchi? And Uncle Honda?"

Dad nods.

"Aunt Mai?"

Another nod.

"Aunt Shizuka? Uncle Otogi?" I ask in a tiny voice. How did I not know about this guy if he knew pretty much everyone in my parents' sprawling circle of friends? How is it I could have gone sixteen years without so much as learning of his existence? Despite myself, a kernel of angry hurt starts up inside me.

Abruptly, Dad sinks his face into his hands. It's unexpected and entirely weird. Most cheerful guy ever, remember? But right now my father looks like he has the weight of the world on his shoulders. "I don't know what to suggest, honey. I'm being as honest with you as I can about all of it, at least at the moment."

"'At the moment'? You mean there's more you haven't told me?" I say incredulously. "Are there any more bosom buddies hiding in the wings of this apparent dark and shady past you have? What were you before, Dad – some sore of caped superhero who saved the world and then swore never to reveal his secret identity for fear of endangering those he loves?"

Dad stares at me. For one heart-stopping moment I think he's going to say yes. I mean, seriously, I was just joking. I think what I just said was actually part of a storyline from a manga I finished reading last week. The entire conversation teeters on the edge of full blown You Are Now Entering Crazy Town, Please Raise Your Disbelief and Check Your Sanity at the Door.

Luckily for me, he doesn't say yes. Phew! He just gives a little laugh and shakes his head. "Not quite. I was good at Duel Monsters, and back then people took it pretty seriously, that's all. This friend taught me a lot about the game, and even more about myself. It's why I'll never forget him, even if I don't talk about him much. He's in here." He taps the centre of his chest, just above his heart. "That's why I'd pull out of this duel, Sakura, and why you shouldn't feel guilty about it. He'll always be important to me, but he's part of my past. You're part of my present, and of my future. He'd understand. I don't have to remember him by doing something public for Kaiba Corp. He wouldn't have wanted that. Just being able to share him with you at last is tribute enough."

Okay, I know it sounds pretty schmaltzy. I'm hearing it and I think it's schmaltzy. It sounds like … like something out of one of those over-the-top American Hallmark movies – the ones that always feature stuff like cancer victims making thousands of paper birds; or Victorian beggar girls being rescued by handsome upper-class gentlemen who then fall in love despite being from different ends of society; or brave little kids who were horribly disfigured in freak house fires somehow softening the icy hearts of a scary businessmen and bikers who usually eat live kittens for breakfast. Or something. Like … like when President Seto Kaiba from Kaiba Corp. gave all that money to some tiny orphanage in downtown Domino just as it was about to close down from lack of funding. Nobody saw it coming, and it was totally unbelievable and heart-warming in an unreal kind of way. Most people thought that was all some big publicity stunt until President Kaiba refused to come to the ribbon-cutting ceremony after the place reopened. Who would go to all that trouble for publicity and then not show his face? It was a case of either genuine altruism or a genuine mental breakdown – with President Kaiba you can never be quite sure.

But getting back to what I was saying: Dad's words feel like they should make me want to gag the way those implausible schmaltzy movies do, but instead I have a totally different lump in my throat, as though I'm choking on one of Mom's indigestible rock cakes (seriously, I love my mom, but her cooking sucks harder than an industrial vacuum). I just stare at Dad for a while, trying to figure out what to say. I mean, what can you say to something like that?

"Sakura?" he says eventually. "Sweetheart?"

"Why didn't you tell me about all this before?" I sound hurt. Okay, what the hell? Where do I get off sounding hurt at a time like this? Still, there it is in my voice, plain as day.

Where does that phrase even come from, by the way? 'Plain as day'? Days aren't plain. They're pretty damn colourful sometimes, even if the colour is blue and coming out of your own mouth because of how shitty your day is.

Dad sighs. "You were too young. Plus, like I said, it's complicated."

"I can handle complicated. I watched all nine Star Wars movies and understood even the boring parts about intergalactic politics. I read War and Peace when I was fourteen." Okay, so it was just because Ryu bet me an entire case of Choc Fulla Delights that I couldn't finish it in a week, and I'd already bet him that he couldn't fit three golf balls in his mouth at once and he hadn't backed down. "I like complicated."

"Maybe so, but there's a difference between that kind of complicated and this kind. This kind is more … personal. When you add in human emotions it makes things a lot messier, and I just didn't particularly want to share some of those with you when you were more concerned with finger-painting and learning your multiplication tables. I guess you could say I didn't want to burden you with it."

"Burden me? Dad, I'm sixteen. I know my way around human emotions by now. Five days out of each month I'm a raging ball of the stupid things. You had a friend who obviously meant a lot to you, and to everyone you know, but he died, and you've apparently been blaming yourself for that for, like, decades. Which is totally stupid, because I might not know details, but I know you, and you'd never ever do anything to hurt anyone. Ever. Did I miss anything out?"

He doesn't give me a proper answer. Instead he says, "Sometimes fathers are allowed to keep secrets from their daughters."

"And sometimes daughters are allowed to think their fathers are dumb."

This time his smile is more authentic. "Isn't that a given?"

"Dad, be serious."

"I'm trying, sweetheart. You have no idea how difficult this conversation is for me."

"So make it easier by telling me everything. Who was this guy? What exactly happened all those years ago? Let me in, Dad. You say I'm important to you and you want to share him with me, so … share. C'mon, they say a problem shared is a problem halved, and if you've been carrying this around for so long you must be long overdue for some catharsis."

Dad does another one of those weird silences; the kind where you can hear the pin leaving someone's fingers. Then he reaches out and ruffles my hair. I hate it (like my hair needs any help looking crappy?) but I don't pull away. Instead I keep looking at him, seeing in his familiar features the face of someone much younger. I can see him as he was in those old magazines: sixteen years old, his friends by his side, laughing like he's on top of the world.

Except that now I know there was someone missing in those pictures – someone who should've been in them. Is that why Dad gave up Duel Monsters when he obviously loved it so much? He'd already stopped playing by the time I was born, so it couldn't have been because of me. The magazine articles dry up around his seventeenth birthday, so whatever made him retire must've happened not long after this Battle City thing.

Poor Dad. I never knew. It's weird, thinking of him as a kid like me, but it's even weirder thinking of him as a kid like me who has to deal with losing his best friend and falling in love with Mom when she was still just a childhood friend and might have been in love with the dead friend. I mean, I kind of know how some of it feels, what with Ryu probably being head-over-heels with someone who isn't me and everything, but how would I feel if Ryu was suddenly gone from my life? I try out the idea, imagining it as best I can before I start to feel sick and push it away again.

My poor dad.

"You know what," I say, interrupting the silence before he has time to answer, "don't tell me yet. Don't tell me just because I'm pushing you. I'd rather you told me everything when you're ready. And in the meantime, Dad, you should so totally do this ceremonial duel thing for Kaiba Corp. What?" I add, because he jerks and suddenly looks at me like I've grown a second head. "What did I say?"

"Nothing." He blinks myopically at me. "Well, no, that's not true. You've said a lot. Some of which I think I really needed to hear."

"So will you do it?"

"The duel?"

"Sure. I'd be proud of you if you did; now I know why you'd be doing it. Maybe it'll exorcise some of those bogus feelings of guilt you've been keeping around like an outdated pair of jeans that don't fit and look heinous but you just can't bear to throw out."

"That's … one way of putting it."

"I'm coming top of my class for Creative Writing. My teacher says I have an eye for inventive similes and expressions. So, answer please?"

"If you really don't mind -"

"Duh, Dad. I said that, didn't I? Don't be such a sprank."

"A what?"

"A sprank. You know; someone who totally flids too much over the little stuff. A sprank."

He blinks at me, vacant as a fritzing vid-screen. I sigh. Adults. Sometimes there's just no getting through to them, y'know? It's like we don't even speak the same language.

"Let me put it in terms you can understand," I say slowly, getting to my knees and putting a hand on either of his shoulders, turning him to face me like I'm the parent and he's the child. "I want you to duel. I want you to go out there and kick butt. I want you to resurrect the stuff in your head and your heart that your friend taught you and show the world that he's still alive in you. That's what I want. Do you think that's doable?"

"I think I can probably handle that."

"Good." I pat his shoulders and then sink back so I'm sitting on my heels. It's way uncomfortable, but there's one more thing I want to say before I'm done with this. "Can I at least know his name?"

Dad starts to say something, and then stops. "Yami," he says at last.

"Just 'Yami'?"

"Yup. Like just Prince, or just Britney, or just Gackt."

"Ew, Dad, you're totally showing your age. Plus, comparing your closest friend with Britney my-bingo-wings-say-I'm-too-old-for-tank-tops-and-hot-pants-but-that's-not-gonna-stop-me Spears? So not the way to show your respect for the guy. You could at least make a contemporary and not-sucky comparison."

"Gackt isn't sucky."

"Gackt isn't human. He hasn't aged since I was born. He probably looked the same as he does now when you were born."

For some reason Dad really laughs at this. I'm not sure why. It's not one of my funnier ripostes, but after the weight of the conversation we've just had it still makes me feel better. I prefer my Dad when he's being … well, my Dad. Cheerful to the point of being blinkered against all the bad shit in the world, a little dorky, but generally okay.

"I love you, Dad," I say suddenly. I instantly turn the colour of raw beef with embarrassment.

Dad seems surprised but pleased. He tugs me towards him and plants a kiss on the top of my head, right at the point where my hair fountains off into all its best crazy peaks and troughs. He used to kiss me like that when I was a little kid, and I'd bet my bootlaces he kissed the top of my lil' baby skull when I was still tiny enough to tuck into even the crook of his arm. For some reason I get this warmth in the pit of my tummy, even though I should be totally mortified at the mushiness overload.

"Gerroff," I say, pushing him away. "Now go. Go on, off with you. Go and practise your … whatever it is you have to practise so you can kick President Kaiba's butt again." I give an almost innocent shrug at his expression. "What? You think I read all those magazines and failed to pick up that you always served him both cheeks roasted on a silver platter whenever you two duelled?"

Dad's expression flickers. "Well, apart from one time at Duellist Kingdom." He pats his knees and gets up. "But that, again, is a story for another time. Do you have homework tonight?"

"Well that's a fine way to act when I've just been so generous and affectionate."

"Which means yes. English translation?"

I grump. I'm remarkably good at it. "Five pages."

"Better get started then."

I snatch up my pillow and make as if to throw it at him, which makes him chuckle and scuttle out of the room. I lower the pillow and flop back on my mattress, contemplating the ceiling for a moment before I hear the door creak.

"I love you too, sweetheart."

Of course, I spend the night mulling over everything I've learned. I don't get much sleep. Well, would you? So by the time morning rolls around I'm sporting a fancy pair of bags under my eyes that Louis Vuitton could sell for a billion each. I'm not really one for make-up, but even I can't just let those things run loose on my face for school, so I inexpertly slap on some stuff Mom gave me last birthday in one of her attempts to make me more feminine. Sometimes I think she's frustrated that I'm not all graceful and girly like she was at my age. Sometimes I'm pretty damn sure of it. I can't do much about the graceful bit, but I periodically try to do myself up on the girly front – with very mixed results.

Case in point: when I get to school and don't even make it to class before I'm waylaid by a harpy in human skin.

"Get into Mommy's make-up bag?" snipes one of the girls from Yoko Tenjo's crew. "Didn't anybody ever teach you how to put on foundation? You look like a clown."

"Oh, bite me," I say in as bored a voice as I can manage. The yawn isn't faked, though. Hey, I said I didn't get much sleep.

"I think you're right," the girl says to the clone next to her.

"About what?"

"Well she just about propositioned me. You heard her. She really is a lesbo."

I'm telling you, it takes all my willpower not to sink my fist into her face. Despite my temper I'm not, by nature, a violent person. It probably comes from being the size of a kumquat, and about as much use in a fight. I'm more likely to walk away from a conflict than wade into it with arms windmilling and feet looking for crotches to kick. It's not even the fact this excuse for a relevant human being has called me a lesbian that gets me riled. It's the way she says this like it's some huge insult, and the way I know she's just waiting for me to either deny it or burst into tears or something.

Yeah, right. As if.

I pick Option C, as always, and turn on my heel, flicking my hair over my shoulder. And when I flick my hair I don't mean I'm just doing it for effect. It's my own little mutiny. If you get caught in the radius it's like being hit in the face with a cat o' nine tails. So when she shrieks … well, it's not my fault she was standing perhaps a little too close to me, is it?

I'm feeling pretty pleased with myself until lunchtime, when the girl and her pal fetch reinforcements. And you can guess who that means.

Yup; Yoko Tenjo, in my face, invading my space, and on my case.

The worst part is how she does it all while touting Ryu – my Ryu – like President Kaiba touts whatever model or actress he's hired to accompany him to Kaiba Corp.'s latest big bash. President Kaiba has a definite type – leggy, long-haired and pale as plain yoghurt – but he never stays with them for longer than, ooh, seven minutes and fifty-three seconds. His brother has been with the same girl for years, but not Seto Kaiba. Nope. Gossip rags say he's a player and talk endlessly about his inability to commit, and how he's so wedded to his company he doesn't have any room left in his heart for actual, y'know, people,but Mom once told me it's just because the girls he dates aren't 'the one who got away'.

I guess I kind of know how the guy feels. Not the part about having so much money I could bathe in caviar if I really fancied stinking of expensive fish eggs, but the part about never wanting to settle for any old bod. Not that my situation really lends itself to me finding any old bod to settle for, but the theory is all present and correct. For me, it'll always be Ryu, even if he's completely clueless and will likely always remain so – especially with Skinny McBitchlet literally standing between us with her hand proprietarily around his bicep. Ryu, for his part, is so busy following the swim coach's orders and loading up on as much protein as he can shovel into his mouth that he seems oblivious to everything around him. I've been at his house around mealtimes, and let me tell you, it's scary to watch him and his dad fight over the last chicken drumstick. Nevertheless, I admit, I'm peeved at him. Again.

Hellfire, Ryu, I want to say. Someone rip out your pituitary so you stop acting like such a clichéd boy.

Skinny McBitchlet squares up to me, all smug and Bitchlet-like. You know the type. There's one in every school. I'm expecting her to go for my sexual orientation jugular after her minion's earlier comment, but instead she feasts on my other major artery. Not before treating me to a dose of the regular Tenjo wit and charm, however.

"Look where you're going, squeeb."

I try to edge past her to get to the lunch queue.

"I'm talking to you, squeeb."

A squeeb, for those who are interested, is a type of fungus found at the bottom of lockers that haven't been cleaned out in a while. I'm not sure if it's an actual technical term, but it's what everyone calls it. It's not as bad as being called a twingo, or a crumb-licker – both of which can be easily translated into physical vernacular by parting your index and middle fingers like a peace sign and then sticking your tongue in between them. Those who just did that, I'm doing a mental slow hand-clap. Those who didn't, well done. You have successfully mastered visualisation.

Right now I'm visualising Yoko Tenjo falling and breaking her ankle. I'm visualising it with all my might.

Nope. Nothing. Is karma a totally outdated concept? How is this girl still standing when she should've been hit by lightning already? I'm too tired for this. I'm really, really just too, too tired for this kind of craptitude.

"I'm not a squeeb," I say tiredly.

"You're right," Yoko says, surprising me.

"I am?"

"Sure. You're not a squeeb."

I brace myself. She has something else planned, I'm sure of it. So what am I? A twingo? A crumb-licker? A muff-diver? A scraping from the veruca on the foot of humanity? Oh, wait, that last one is you, isn't it, Yoko? Except that I know, satisfying as it would be to say this, my life would be even more hellish if I do.

I hate high school politics. Maybe Mom had the right idea by only befriending boys. Boys can be dumb schmucks most of the time, but at least they're too dumb to backstab with the same ferocity and conniving spite as girls.

"You're just a loser."

Hmm, not as bad I was expecting. I can take being called a loser. In fact, compared to what else she's called me over our quality time spent together, being called a loser is practically a compliment.

"But what can you expect?" Yoko goes on, because she's totally not done yet. "Like father like daughter, right?" She shoots me a brilliant smile that shines like polished glass and cuts like it too.

It's not the most vicious thing she has ever said to me. It's not even the most creative. By rights, I should get busy reconciling myself to this sort of thing now I know my dad is going to be competing in this Battle City re-enactment. After all, I'm going to be hearing it a lot from now until the end of the contest, right?

But something inside me, right in the pit of my belly, goes suddenly cold and then, without warning, boiling hot. It's a whooshing sensation, like I'm going to puke or something. I don't know what comes over me. One second I'm standing there, head bowed and staring at the ground like usual, the next I've stepped forward and the palm of my hand hurts. Like, a lot. There's this gasp all around, and it's then that I notice how Yoko's head is turned to one side at a really awkward angle, and there's this growing red patch on her cheek.

"Don't you ever," I growl – what the hell, I'm growling? What am I, a rabid attack dog? – "insult my father again, or I swear I will do more than slap you."

It takes a second. I think Yoko's hard drive has to reboot in order to compute this new data. When it does, however, it starts up its Raging Fury programme and I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that my goose? Completely cooked. Goose flambé. Goose barbeque. Smeary stain of grease on the ground where my goose used to be because it was dumb and angered the fire-breathing dragon that just toasted it like a marshmallow you accidentally drop in your campfire and then fish out again even though it's blackened and totally inedible. Aaaaand I'm babbling.

Aah! What the hell have I done? I was worried about Dad's antics humiliating me when I should've been more concerned about my own getting me not only blacklisted, but also ritually murdered on the pyre of high school hierarchy. Bottom feeders like me do not slap queen bees like Yoko Tenjo. Not if we want to see graduation. I didn't even fight her for my best friend when she sank her claws into him and made it clear she was taking him away from me.

And yet … you know what? I don't regret it. Really. I'm proud of my dad. If Skinny McBitchlet wants to insult me, fine, bring it on. I'm used to that. But if she thinks for one second that I'm going to let her badmouth my dad, then boy, has she got another thing coming – possible five-fingered and at great speed.

I brace myself again, but for once I don't back down.

"Why you little -" Yoko practically is breathing fire. I swear, little wisps of smoke are coming out of her nostrils. Very fetching in a Maleficent-from-Sleeping-Beauty sort of way. Her heels go click-click-click as she stalks towards me. Cripes, she actually let go of Ryu's arm. She must be really mad. I wonder if anybody's ever slapped her or called her on her bullshit before. "Make no mistake," she hisses. "You are going to regret that."

"Likewise," I reply, "if you think I was joking before. Say what you want about me, but leave my family out of it."

"Who the hell are you to tell me what to do? You're nobody. You're just a loser who thinks she actually means something. You only exist to make the rest of us feel better because we're not you."

Ouch. Oh criminy, don't cry, you big wuss. Act tough. You've come too far to play the shrinking violet now. Go for broke. Hey, if she's going to make your life miserable for this, you might as well make it count. "At least," I say in a far calmer voice than I expect to hear, considering how my throat is closing up in a fair impression of anaphylactic shock, "I don't have to belittle other people just to get my jollies."

"Belittle? That's rich. You're already tiny. Just some insignificant speck I could accidentally step on without realising it."

"And at least," I say, still bizarrely calmly, probably because all that boiling cold rage inside me has brought on this huge, like, epiphany about Yoko Tenjo and the way she works, "I don't have to make fun of other people's fathers – fathers who love their kids and accept them just the way they are – just because that way I don't feel so bad that mine ran off with another woman and abandoned me and my mom."

Sometimes there are advantages to being so small and socially invisible that nobody even notices you're around. You hear all sorts of interesting things. It's amazing how loose-lipped people can be about stuff like that when they don't realise you're there.

Yoko draws back her arm, a look of pure fury on her face. I don't think I've ever seen her this mad before – and neither have her minions, judging by the looks on their faces.

Whoa boy, here it comes. I will myself not to flinch and try to remember what Uncle Honda said when he was last home on leave about how to block a punch.

But as it turns out, I don't have to block her arm, because suddenly someone else grabs it. A large hand closes around her wrist. She stumbles as the momentum she was putting into her swing is curtailed by the person standing just behind her.

"Cool it, Yoko," says Ryu.

I'm telling you, my heart just about stops.

Yoko rounds on him, spitting like a wet cat. "I should've known you'd side with her."

"I'm not siding with anyone."

The cheering inside me that Ryu has finally ridden to my rescue dims at this. Why the hell isn't he siding with me? I'm clearly the victim here. All right, so Skinny McBitchlet has the slapped face, which is coming up in a really clear impression of my hand now. Even so, what about me? I'm finally making a stand after way, way too long of taking her crap – not to mention I'm poised to take even more crap from now until the end of my time at Domino High because I stood up to her and real life isn't like the movies, where the bully disappears if you do that. Hello? Can I get a little support here?

"Don't give me that," Yoko snorts. "You always side with her. Even when she's not around, all you talk about is her. Don't you know how sick of it I am? Don't you realise how that makes me feel?"

Ooh, this is getting more and more interesting.

"Because all you seem to do is talk trash about her. She's my best friend. I mean, sure we don't hang out as much since I made the team, but it's not like I dropped her deliberately or anything. Sakura has been really supportive of my training schedule and made tons of allowances when we couldn't hang out together."

What? He actually noticed I wasn't around? And apparently felt bad about it, too.

Note to self: standing with jaw flapping is bad form. Especially when surrounded by overly-tanned-and-made-up piranhas.

Ryu goes on, "It's you who always makes a big stink whenever I want to invite her over to our table to eat lunch with us, or when I want to walk to class with her. Of course I feel like I have to defend her."

"Yeah, right. You're just trying to undermine me all the time, that's what it is. Like with this Battle City thing. I can barely even talk about it without you getting all defensive."

"Because my parents are both competitors. You know that."

"Oh spare me. I know that's just an excuse so you don't have to pretend you care about my feelings. It's been obvious from the very beginning that you were never interested in me."

Really? My ears perk.

Yoko glares at Ryu. There seem to be tears in her eyes. "You were just stringing me along, weren't you? Playing with my heart. I was just some … some game to you."

Now Ryu just looks confused. "What? No, I … hang on; I thought we were just friends. I thought it was to do with the whole swim team thing. You know; the way cheerleaders and people on the sports teams always hang out. We've never even eaten lunch alone together." Panic cuts its curves in his face. "What did you think this was?"

She curls her lip. "I thought you being cute could make up for the lack of brainpower, but now I can see I was mistaken." She shoots me a murderous look. "You two deserve each other." She flounces off, closely followed by her gaggle of hangers-on. It's not the way she pictured this scene going, I can tell. I'm remarkably intuitive that way.

Ryu and I watch them go, him still looking perplexed, me just keeping my jaws glued shut. After a moment he looks at me, his mouth in a little moue of bewilderment that simultaneously makes me want to kiss and punch it.

"Did I really string her along?"

I shake my head. I'm not sure which species is harder to explain the world to: parents or boys. "You're a complete and utter twit, you know that?"

"I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to insult the guy who just saved your bacon."

"My bacon was pretty much saved already, thanks very much."

"Not from where I was standing."

"Yeah, well," I sigh, watching the last of the girls disappear around the corner and taking a moment to consider just how many exploding squibs of bitchy revenge I now have to look forward to in my near-future. "Let's just say the jury is still out on how saved my bacon is now."

Ryu frowns again. A blond forelock falls across his face. For the first time in a long time I feel okay about reaching up and flicking it aside so he can see properly.

"So … you wanna share a table at lunch?" he asks. I haven't sat with him in ages.

"You mean you still haven't finished eating?" I say incredulously.

"Nah, that was just a snack. Coach says I need to beef up if I'm gonna win my heat at the inter-school championship." His eyes shine when he talks about this. He really does have a love of his life, but thankfully (from where I'm standing), it's not a girl at all. Ryu just loves to compete.

He is so much like his parents. And not just because he has supreme self-confidence or because he's willing to fight dirty to get the last chicken drumstick.

"I'll see if I have a window for you in my diary." I stride forward. "I do, so long as you're paying."

"Hey, isn't it supposed to be the rescuee who treats the rescuer?"

"Maybe in your universe."

We've only gone a few feet when I turn and punch him in the shoulder. I used to do that a lot when we were kids. Ryu's more a guy of actions than words – probably why Yoko confused him so much. Her world revolves around gossip and backbiting.

"Nice to have you back."

"I went somewhere?"

See what I mean? I roll my eyes at him. "Twit."

But, see, that's okay, because he's my twit. Just like my dad may be a total freak who still plays a children's card game, but he's my total freak, and I'll defend him to the last against dragons, monsters, boogiemen and bitchy Quad Bs. Because that's what loving someone means. You accept them with all their quirks, not in spite of them.

Wow, that actually sounded profound.

I don't believe this. I do not believe this. I think I may have actually learned a life-lesson.

From Duel Monsters.

I guess I really am my father's daughter after all. Which, all things considered, is no bad thing.

Fin.

The words that a father speaks to his children in the privacy of home are not heard by the world, but, as in whispering-galleries, they are clearly heard at the end and by posterity. -- Jean Paul Richter

Side-flings, Homages and Downright Rip-offs

"Yoko Tenjo?" I can see my mom flicking through her mental account of names and faces. "The girl you spilled yakisoba over on your first day at school?"

-- Yakisoba is a kind of Japanese fried noodle dish. 'Yaki' means fried and 'soba' means noodles. It's a delicious fast food and is a popular staple of most lunch menus in Japan. Common ingredients include cabbage, onion, green pepper, carrot, meat and seafood. Beni-shoga (red pickled ginger) and ao-nori (dried green seaweed) are often used for toppings.

But honestly, who the heck wears Jimmy Choos to school?

-- Jimmy Choo Ltd is a British company selling luxury designer shoes, some of which can sell for hundreds, if not thousands of pounds – especially the one-of-a-kind couture varieties, which celebrities often squabble over and are renowned all over the world.

I sprained an ankle the one time I tried to wear stilettos at Aunt Shizuka's wedding and ended up benching myself all evening while Ryu danced with Oki Kajiki

-- 'Oki' means 'of the ocean', which I thought was appropriate since her father is Ryota Kajiki (known to dubbers as Mako Tsunami).

The original ugly sisters cut up their feet and got blood in the prince's glass slipper …

-- Sakura is referring to the version of the fairytale written by the Brothers Grimm, which wasn't actually called Cinderella at all, but Aschenputtel. In it, help comes not from a fairy-godmother but the wishing tree that grows on the grave of Aschenputtel's real mother and the pigeons who live around the eaves of the house, whom Aschenputtel has always been kind to and fed even when she had little to eat herself. The stepsisters try to trick the prince by cutting off parts of their feet in order to get the slipper to fit, but the prince is alerted by two of the pigeons, who peck out the stepsisters' eyes, thus sealing their fate as blind beggars for the rest of their lives.

It sounds like … like something out of one of those over-the-top American Hallmark movies – the ones that always feature stuff like cancer victims making thousands of paper birds.

-- An ancient Japanese legend promises that anyone who folds a thousand origami cranes will be granted a wish by a crane, such as long life or recovery from illness or injury. The crane in Japan is one of the mystical or holy beasts (others include the dragon and tortoise), and is said to live for a thousand years. The most famous story of someone trying this is of Sadako Sasaki, who lived in Hiroshima at the time of the atomic bombing. She developed leukaemia from the radiation and spent her waning time in a nursing home folding paper cranes so she could make one wish when she'd reached a thousand. She wanted to wish to live. However, she only managed to fold six hundred and forty-four cranes before she became too weak to fold one more, and died shortly afterwards. Sadako's story has almost passed into legend since then, and the term 'a thousand paper cranes' or 'a thousand paper birds' has become synonymous with the idea of a great personal tragedy, especially concerning illness.

… Victorian beggar girls being rescued by handsome upper-class gentlemen who then fall in love despite being from different ends of society …

-- Sort of a mix of The Little Match Girl, a tragic fairytale by Han Christian Anderson (en. wikipedia. org/wiki/The (underscore) Little (underscore) Match (underscore) Girl) and Pygmalion (en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Pygmalion (underscore) (play)), which many people will know better as the musical My Fair Lady.

… brave little kids who were horribly disfigured in freak house fires somehow softening the icy hearts of scary businessmen and bikers who usually eat live kittens for breakfast.

-- A cross-section of side-flings here, from a section of the film Shallow Hal, Annie and Mr. Warbucks in Annie, and practically every movie Shirley Temple ever made.