It was the middle of the night.
The house had long since fallen silent, the sounds of the day gradually swallowed by the stillness that settled over the neighborhood.
Katsumi had already taken his bath and was now sitting in his room, his damp hair still carrying the faint scent of shampoo as he stared at the cards spread across his desk.
There was one question occupying his mind.
Should he continue using Tachikaze as his public deck, or should he start using Blue-Eyes?
His fingers lightly tapped against the tabletop.
Being a collector was not inherently a bad thing.
It was the method of collection that had become the problem.
Taking cards from others simply because he wanted them was inevitably going to create friction between him and their owners.
Even if he considered those cards valuable, the person he took them from would hardly share the same enthusiasm.
And Katsumi had already learned that people tended to become rather unpleasant when their possessions disappeared.
He leaned back in his chair and glanced toward the small collection of Blue-Eyes cards resting nearby.
Blue-Eyes was undoubtedly stronger.
More importantly, it was his deck.
A deck built around cards he genuinely treasured, rather than something he had assembled merely for convenience.
But using it publicly came with another problem.
The moment he began displaying Blue-Eyes, people would notice.
And once people noticed…
Katsumi’s eyes narrowed.
He could already imagine the questions.
Where did you get these cards?
How did you get them?
Can I see them?
Can we play?
And, inevitably, someone would eventually ask the most troublesome question of all.
“Can I have one?”
Katsumi’s expression became strangely solemn.
“…Absolutely not.”
The answer came so naturally that he almost surprised himself.
He reached toward the Blue-Eyes cards, carefully straightening their edges before placing them back together.
Perhaps Tachikaze was better for now.
It was powerful enough to fight with, familiar enough to use without drawing excessive attention, and, most importantly, it did not reveal just how valuable his collection truly was.
Katsumi rested his chin against his hand.
Blue-Eyes could wait.
There was no reason to expose his hand before he needed to.
After all, a collector who revealed everything he possessed was simply inviting people to start asking questions.
And Katsumi had no intention of answering them.
‘Is it really necessary?’
Blue’s voice echoed through his mind, breaking the quiet flow of Katsumi’s thoughts.
“What do you mean?”
Katsumi asked aloud, his gaze shifting toward the empty space before him.
The faint outline of Blue gradually emerged from his imagination, the sleeping dragon appearing before him with its usual lazy expression, as though it had been dragged into the discussion against its will.
‘Whether they ask questions.’
Blue folded his arms.
‘If they annoy you, beat them.’
Katsumi stared at him.
“…That’s your solution?”
‘Yes.’
Blue answered without hesitation.
Katsumi pushed his glasses higher onto the bridge of his nose.
“That creates more problems than it solves.”
‘Then beat them until they stop.’
“…That creates even more problems.”
Blue tilted his head, apparently unable to understand why Katsumi was making the matter so complicated.
Katsumi sighed and leaned back in his chair.
“You can’t solve every problem by fighting.”
‘Why not?’
“Because we’re supposed to be civilized.”
Blue stared at him for several seconds.
‘You fought Aliens with cards today.’
Katsumi went silent.
“…That’s different.”
‘How?’
“Because that was Vanguard.”
‘You still beat someone.’ He appeared more wise.
‘Did you not?’
Katsumi adjusted his glasses again.
“…You’re being surprisingly argumentative tonight.”
Blue simply yawned.
‘I’m sleepy.’
“Then go back to sleep.”
‘Okay.’
The imaginary dragon immediately began fading from view.
Katsumi watched him disappear before turning his attention back toward the Blue-Eyes cards on his desk.
“…Idiot.”
There was a faint smile on his face.
Still, Blue had raised a point.
Perhaps he was overthinking the situation.
Maybe he didn’t need to hide Blue-Eyes forever.
He simply needed to be careful about when and where he used it.
Katsumi gathered the cards into a neat stack, placing them carefully back into their protective sleeves.
“Not yet.”
Blue-Eyes could remain hidden until the right moment arrived.
And when that moment finally came…
Katsumi’s eyes settled on the familiar dragon depicted on the top card.
“…I’ll make sure everyone remembers it.”
The night passed far more quickly than Katsumi would have preferred, and before he had any chance to realize that several hours had slipped away, the darkness beyond his bedroom window had already given way to the pale gold of morning.
Sunlight filtered through the curtains in narrow bands, slowly crawling across the floor and climbing the side of his desk, where his carefully sleeved Blue-Eyes cards remained exactly where he had left them the previous night.
Katsumi, however, was completely unaware of any of it.
Buried beneath his blanket, he remained sprawled across the bed in a posture so motionless that anyone entering the room might have mistaken him for someone who had simply decided that sleep was more important than the continuation of human civilization.
Beside the bed, Blue hovered patiently.
‘Father, wake up.’
There was no response.
Blue sighed, his small wings beating lazily as he drifted closer to the sleeping Katsumi.
‘It is already time for school.’
Still nothing.
The dragon narrowed his eyes, and after watching Katsumi remain completely unmoved for several seconds, he finally floated down toward the bed and reached for the blanket.
His paw passed through it.
Blue froze.
For several seconds, he simply stared at his own paw as though his brain had encountered a problem it had not been programmed to solve.
He slowly withdrew it before reaching forward again.
The same thing happened.
His claws passed through the blanket without resistance, and yet, strangely, there was something different about the sensation this time.
It was not the familiar feeling of an imagined limb passing through an imagined object; there was a faint sensation against his claws, almost like the resistance of air against his scales.
Blue looked down at himself.
His translucent body was no longer as indistinct as it usually appeared within Katsumi’s mind.
The edges of his scales possessed a strange clarity, his wings cast the faintest suggestion of a shadow across the floor, and the morning light passing through the window seemed to bend subtly around his body.
His eyes widened.
‘…What?’
He slowly raised one claw and flexed it.
It moved.
He could feel it.
He could feel the air.
Blue turned toward the mirror hanging against the wall, and what stared back at him was no longer merely the vague image of a creature existing inside Katsumi’s imagination.
It was him.
A small, blue dragon hovering in the middle of Katsumi’s bedroom.
Blue’s mouth slowly opened.
‘I’m outside.’
He spun around in excitement.
‘I’m actually outside!’
His wings beat faster as he flew toward the bed.
‘Father!’
Katsumi stirred beneath the blanket.
‘Father!
Wake up!’
A muffled groan came from beneath the covers.
“Hmm…”
Katsumi shifted onto his side, seemingly determined to continue sleeping despite the dragon shouting directly beside his head.
Blue stared at him in disbelief.
‘Father, I have achieved physical manifestation!’
Katsumi opened one eye.
“…Five more minutes.”
Blue’s expression went completely blank.
‘…What?’
Katsumi rolled over and pulled the blanket over his head, apparently deciding that whatever Blue had just said could wait until after his designated five minutes of additional sleep.
Blue hovered silently above him.
For perhaps three seconds, he attempted to remain patient.
Then his expression darkened.
‘FATHER!’
Katsumi suddenly shot upright.
“What?!”
His hair was an absolute disaster, his glasses were nowhere to be found, and the bewildered expression on his face suggested that he had been violently dragged back into consciousness from somewhere very far away.
He looked around the room before his eyes finally settled on the floating dragon in front of him.
“…Blue?”
‘Yes.’
Katsumi stared.
Blue stared back.
Neither moved.
Katsumi slowly reached toward his bedside table, found his glasses, and placed them on his face, apparently hoping that the sudden appearance of a physical dragon had been caused by poor eyesight.
It had not.
Blue was still there.
“…You’re outside.”
Blue folded his arms proudly.
‘Correct.’
Katsumi’s eyes narrowed as his sleepy expression gradually disappeared, replaced by the analytical focus that had become characteristic of him whenever something fell outside his understanding.
“How?”
Blue shrugged.
‘I don’t know.’
“You don’t know?”
‘I was trying to wake you up, and then suddenly I could touch things.’
Katsumi immediately got out of bed, his curiosity overcoming whatever remained of his desire to sleep.
“Can you actually interact with physical objects?”
Blue nodded.
Katsumi pointed toward the desk.
“Pick up that card.”
His claws closed around its edge, and, to Katsumi’s astonishment, the card actually moved with him.
Blue looked down.
‘Blue-Eyes.’
Katsumi stepped closer, his eyes following every movement as Blue carefully held the card between his claws before placing it back onto the desk.
For several moments, Katsumi said nothing.
“This shouldn’t be possible.”
Blue tilted his head.
‘And yet, it is.’
Katsumi ignored the comment as his mind began moving through possibilities.
Yesterday’s cardfight, his unusually strong connection with Blue, the Blue-Eyes deck, and the strange sensation he had occasionally experienced when the dragon’s presence became particularly vivid all suddenly seemed relevant, but without knowing precisely what had caused the change, he could do little more than construct theories.
“Perhaps the fight triggered something,” he muttered, mostly to himself.
“Or maybe our bond has reached a different stage.”
Blue floated closer.
‘Father.’
“Hm?”
‘School.’
Katsumi paused.
His eyes slowly moved toward the clock.
His expression changed.
“…”
Blue smiled.
‘You have approximately twenty minutes.’
“Twenty?!”
Katsumi exploded into motion.
The calm atmosphere of the bedroom instantly disappeared as Katsumi began throwing clothes together, stuffing books into his bag and searching for anything he might need, while Blue hovered above the chaos and watched with an expression that gradually became more amused.
‘Father.’
“What?!”
‘Your shirt is inside out.’
Katsumi froze.
He looked down.
“…”
Without saying anything, he corrected it and continued preparing.
Blue grinned.
‘I will remember this.’
“Don’t.”
‘Forever.’
Katsumi gave him a tired look before grabbing his bag and heading toward the door, but he stopped just before leaving and glanced back at the dragon.
“You’re staying here.”
Blue’s expression immediately fell.
‘What?’
“I can’t exactly walk into school with a dragon floating beside me.”
Blue looked down at himself before glancing back at Katsumi.
‘I’m a spirit.’
“You’re a visible spirit.”
Blue paused.
That distinction seemed to bother him more than he expected.
‘…Fair.’
Katsumi opened the door, but after taking only a single step into the hallway, he stopped again as another thought occurred to him.
“If you can materialize now, then yesterday’s fight may have changed something.”
Blue’s expression became more thoughtful.
‘Perhaps.’
Katsumi glanced toward the room, where the Blue-Eyes cards remained neatly arranged on the desk.
For the first time since waking, his hurried expression disappeared, replaced by quiet curiosity.
There was something different about Blue.
Not merely in appearance, but in his presence itself, as though whatever invisible boundary had once separated Katsumi’s imagination from the physical world had become considerably thinner.
Katsumi wanted to investigate it.
He wanted to know why it had happened, what Blue could now do, and whether the change could become permanent.
Unfortunately, the clock offered him no sympathy.
Katsumi sighed and adjusted his glasses.
“There’s no time to investigate this right now.”
Blue floated toward him.
‘Then when?’
Katsumi began walking down the hallway.
“After school.”
Blue’s eyes brightened.
‘We’re taking me with you?’
Katsumi glanced back at him.
“I changed my mind.”
Blue’s grin widened.
‘Excellent.’
“If you’re suddenly capable of interacting with the physical world, I’d rather know exactly what you’re capable of before you accidentally break something, frighten someone, or cause me an explanation I don’t feel like giving.”
Blue considered this for a moment before nodding solemnly.
‘So we’re going on an experiment.’
Katsumi sighed.
“That’s one way of describing it.”
Blue followed him through the hallway, his wings beating quietly behind Katsumi as the two of them left the room together.
Neither of them knew it yet, but what had begun as a simple decision to wake Katsumi for school had quietly opened a door that neither of them had even known existed.
And once that door had been opened, there was no guarantee that it would ever close again.
Author’s note:
Double chap because I am feeling good.