Under the Rain [Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS]

S2-34✩ A Meaningful Reunion, At Long Last

Ryoken and Mirai arrived at their destination in the rental car that Aso drove, not speaking more than three sentences on the way there. While the man waited inside the car, Mirai followed her brother as he got out of the car and soon found that they were visiting the cemetery--specifically, Dr. Kogami and his late first wife's graves that were next to each other. It was arranged to be that way by Mirai's mother, since she knew very well that Dr. Kogami loved Ryoken's mother just as much as he loved her, once.

Mirai put some fresh flowers on the gravestones and clasped her hands to pray with Ryoken. After they had done praying, they found a park bench outside the cemetery to sit together and again went silent for a long while.

Finally, the silence ended when Ryoken took out something from his pocket and muttered to her, "You dropped this."

From the corner of her ruby-red eye, she could see a Duel Monsters card with a green frame design in his outstretched hand--a Spell card. She reluctantly took the card from him and observed it.

Mirai slightly narrowed her eyes at the sight of the card, seeming to be at a loss of words while Ryoken looked away and chuckled. "I still remember when we were still little kids, you used to say that you envied how the birds were able to soar freely in the sky. So, did you enjoy becoming one of them and living out your childhood fantasy?"

Mirai didn't answer as she avoided eye contact with him, that card being drawn close to her lips without her realizing it. She said nothing, but her silence was loud enough for him. After seeing her reaction, he looked up at the sky and whistled, successfully grabbing her attention with his imitation of a bird's boisterous chirp.

"I don't suppose I need to talk in bird language..." he said at the end of his small performance, smiling innocently for her, "Do I, MIRIA?"

Ryoken could see her eyes immediately widening in shock and cheeks blushing at the mention of that name. Finally, she pulled the card away from her lips as she quickly looked away and covered her face in embarrassment.

"No way... that boy was Nii-san, after all!" she loudly whispered to herself from behind her palms, "But who in their right mind would use their own face as their avatar?!"

"GO Onizuka would. And my alternate account, and the knights... it's not that uncommon when nobody cared about your real-world appearance," Ryoken replied to her monologue, making her shoulder twitch, "If you're curious how I found out that girl was you, don't forget I'm a hacker. Just give an avatar name away and I'd know who they actually were in an instant."

As he said that, a small smile tugged on his lips. He actually wanted to give all the credit to his hacking skills but couldn't, because before relying on it, he admitted that he somehow just knew it was her whom he met on that day. Was it his older brother's instinct? Well, he'd like to think that was it, although it sounded ridiculous.

He glanced at his sister, who was still sulking, and a mischievous smirk soon found its way to his lips. "By the way, you looked mesmerizing in that outfit. Were you replicating the Swan Lake? But you were a sparrow, not a swan, and there was no lake in LINK VRAINS, either. Hold on, I think there's a term for that... ah, was it low-cost cosplay?"