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Yusei sits beside the open window, the evening air chilling his face. Seeing the stars at night is impossible in Satellite, but the vast darkness isn’t frightening. It calms him.
It’s gentle.
Stardust Dragon glitters in his small hands, shining as bright as the light of a star. It’s a guardian, a protector—one that will tribute itself to protect his own monsters from destruction and return again to his side. The way it reflects silver in the darkness of his room is almost supernatural. How something so beautiful ended up in his possession is something he’ll never understand.
Martha told him that a stranger came to her once, long before Yusei could ever remember, leaving this precious gift behind just for him. He doesn’t have a face, a voice for Yusei to return to, but an inexplicable part of himself knows that they have crossed paths once before.
Yuki Judai.
Even his name is lovely.
“If you like that Judai-san so much, why don’t you just marry him?”
Yusei doesn’t hear Jack entering the room. Jack glares down at him, petulant and bitter. It’s the same face he makes when Yusei is preoccupied with something else instead of playing with him and Crow. He’s been sitting by himself in bed the whole night, after all.
“I will,” Yusei declares. “I’ll find Judai-san in Neo Domino someday and I’ll marry him.”
“Hmph! As if he’ll ever like someone as small as you!”
“Then I’ll get taller and stronger,” Yusei says, leaving the edge of the bed and standing up so that he’s on the same level as Jack. “I’ll grow up and become a proper adult so that Judai-san will like me too.”
All Yusei needs to do is become someone worthy of Judai’s love. Worthy of the monster Judai imparted upon him. Yusei looks toward Neo Domino’s city skyline gleaming in the darkness, the incomplete Daedalus Bridge stretching across the water, lucent and unreachable. His heart thumps in his chest, aching and beating almost painfully with hope.
Clustering wishes will become a new shining star. Become the path its light shines upon.
Yusei vows to find Judai, no matter how many years it takes.
No matter what it takes.