Chapter Text
After the snowstorm a key appeared in his hands, it had been his dad's and one of the few clues he had from his parents, he refused to accept their death. He curled himself up in his bed, gripping the key as he prayed this was all a dream and his mom would soon shake him awake. Weeks went by and the nightmare continued.
Instead of his mom something else appeared to answer his questions, a device he had never seen before, the words "Yu-Gi-Oh! Wiki" plastered at the top of the website. At first, he tried asking Akari about it, but she only stared at him confused before waving him off "there's nothing there, Yuma" and patting him on the head.
After a week of debating his curiosity won over his causation. There werea lott of words, sections for cards he had never seen and people he didn't know. It was a treasure trove of knowledge, like someone had spent lifetimes recording history of some ancient card obsessed civilization. He spent hours scrolling, Akari occasionally came to check on him but when tried to show her what he would she just smiled and shook her head.
"'Yuma Tsukumo' that's my name." He clicked the name, opening a tab that described him. It was weird seeing someone know so much about him, "'Least favorite food: Tomato (formerly)' bleh, I'm never gonna like tomatoes!" Yuma stuck out his tongue and kept scrolling.
"Astral?" He knew all the names but the one labeled 'other half,' maybe he would ask Akari about it later.
He beamed as he read that he won a World Duel Carnival. The website seemed to know all about his past, which was creepy, but if it knew so much about the past surely it would actually know the future.
There were a lot of words he didn't know like 'etymology' or 'strategies' so he asked Akari. She gladly told him and said if he had any more questions she would be happy to answer them.
He would sometimes hear Akari talking to grandma about how happy she is that he's 'thinking about things other than dueling,' so he decided he would keep asking her.
"Big sis, what's chagrin mean?" Yuma clutched the device to his chest.
"Hm, that's a hard one," she ruffled his hair, "it's like when someone feels upset, like how you would feel not being invited to a party."
"Oh," he felt a sting in his heart as he hugged Akari, "I'm sorry." He never meant to hurt his sister.
"Pff, what are you apologizing for," she lifted him onto his lap as she hugged him back.
"But mom and dad paying attention to me was to your chagrin." He gripped the device tighter as he stared at his lap.
"Oh, Yuma," Akari pulled him closer, "You don't have to apologize for something like that, I love you," she kissed him on the cheek and pressed her forehead to his, "you're my little brother, and I know mom and dad loved us both. I never once felt mad at you for something like that."
"Really?" Akari nodded her head, "Yay!" Yuma hugged her tightly.
"I've got some work to do kiddo, see you at dinner?" Akari helped him down and gave him another pat on the head.
"Okay!" Yuma happily ran back to his room.
Her responses got less cheerful when he asked about other things, like 'demonic gates' or what it meant for someone to be sacrificed. She scanned through all the books and artifacts dad had left him and took some of them, saying he was too young to read them.
Soon after he went back to school, he became friends with Kotori and Tetsuo as the article said. He didn't bother trying to show them the device, Akari had shown him others wouldn't be able to see what was on it.
After the duel with Tetsuo, he decided to study the article more and look into what the 'Zexal' tab had to offer. He adored reading about all the people he would meet and the friends he would make, especially astral. Akari had said someone's other half was someone that made you feel complete, she looked a bit sad as she tried to describe it (he later found out about Charlie McCoy, but Yuma decided not to ask). He wanted to meet astral already, he spent long nights talking to the key and waiting for astral to respond.
He spent a whole week crying under his covers when he read that Astral died, clutching the key and wailing all night long. Of course reading he wasn't actually dead and apparently neither was his dad was a shock. He told Akari their parents were in Astral world and she just patted his head again. At that point, he truly resigned himself to keeping his knowledge of the future to himself.
So he stopped telling Akari, he asked her about words but when she started to seem concerned and asked Grandma if he should go to a therapist he decided looking up the words online would be better. Apparently her eight year old brother asking about what it meant to be executed was the last straw for her.
As he got older Yuma realized the phone wouldn't give him all the answers, first it only really started when Astral appeared so there were some years he had no idea what he was supposed to do. He also found out it would not give him test answers, so he had to rely on himself.
Even with all the knowledge he had he still tried to play his part, it wasn't honestly that hard because well, knowing is much easier than dueling and he now knew strategies but had no idea how to use them.
The phone -he decided that was better than 'device'- also didn't give dates so he had no clue when 'the plot' would start. So he just kept going as he had in life, reaching for the sky and feeling the flow.
The wiki wasn't the only site he found. Another called TCGplayer also showed up in his tabs. It had every card he had ever heard of, and many he hadn't (numbers he learned from the wiki, pendulum and fusion were complete mysteries), they all had stock numbers, many were infinite and some said 'only 1 in stock.' He didn't have a lot of money and Akari would have gotten suspicious if a bunch of packages started showing up at their door, so he decided to leave that site be. He would just follow the plot (maybe change something because they seemed extremely dangerous) and get the numbers for Astral that way.
He seemed to be the protagonist so at least he probably wouldn’t lose important duels. Did that thought go to his head? Sometimes, but Kotori was always there to pull him back down (the 50-loss streak also helped).
By the time he turned 13, he had basically memorized every article the wiki had to offer for Zexal (and a few others that didn’t seem important). He also managed to try the Tcg site (ordering a copy of Fairy Cheer Girl), and he found two things. One, the cards he ordered didn’t cost money, which was very lucky for him (he still decided not to use it often if at all because explaining how he got a bunch of rare cards out of nowhere would be weird and he liked his dad’s deck so he had no need to buy a bunch of cards he wasn’t going to use). Two, -for at least the unlimited stock cards- he probably wasn’t taking cards from other people when he ordered them (the ones with only 1 in stock were ones he didn’t touch, he wasn’t willing to risk it, especially with the numbers).
With that knowledge in mind (and the section of the article that said he was 13 when this journey to save like 3 different worlds was happening) he eagerly awaited the day of Astral's arrival (and dreaded the hardships that would come with it).