Chapter 24
"Peeping at the girls' dormitory! You're not getting away with this. We're reporting you to the Academy and getting you expelled, you creep!"
Jasmine's red hair practically bristled as she laid into Syrus with full force.
Syrus was already on his knees in a lit area nearby, wrists bound behind him with rope courtesy of Alexis's two friends, head bowed in a posture of helpless apology.
Alexis herself stood directly ahead, flanked by Jasmine on one side and Mindy on the other.
The two of them were furious and vocal about it. Alexis said nothing.
She stood with her arms folded, watching Syrus with a cold frown, thinking.
She had heard earlier that day that this short kid, Syrus, was apparently close friends with her brother Atticus.
More than that, he was Zane Truesdale's younger brother. Someone like that, she reasoned, shouldn't be pulling a stunt like this.
"I wasn't peeping! I got a letter -- a letter from you, Alexis-senpai -- and I came because of that! It was in my locker this afternoon!"
Syrus scrambled to defend himself, wrestling the envelope out of his pocket with his bound hands and holding it up as proof.
Rowan, watching from a distance, felt the urge to bury his face in his hands growing by the second.
Crowler's forgery was riddled with problems. Anyone looking at it for more than three seconds with a functioning brain would see through it immediately.
"Hm?"
Jasmine snatched the letter first, tore it open, and held it out so Alexis and Mindy could read it alongside her.
Alexis's frown deepened the moment she saw the handwriting.
"I couldn't have written something this ugly. This doesn't look anything like a girl's handwriting."
She paused. "And that lipstick stamp is disgusting. The size of it."
"Also," Mindy said slowly, tilting her head and squinting at the letter with a strange expression, "it says... Rowan? This is addressed to Rowan."
"It... what?!"
Mindy flipped the paper around and held it out to Syrus so he could read the full thing himself.
Syrus read it.
His face went through several emotions in rapid succession and arrived at pure emptiness.
The three girls stared at him in unified silence.
He had been completely taken in by a forged love letter.
Dragged all the way to the back of the Obelisk Blue girls' dormitory in the middle of the night.
And he had done it without even reading the whole letter.
Slifer Red students really were all complete idiots.
With one possible exception -- that Rowan, who had actually answered Crowler's question in theory class this afternoon.
He might be a different case.
"So, Alexis." Jasmine and Mindy both turned to her.
"What do we do with this idiot? Still hand him over to the Academy?"
"No."
A small smile crossed Alexis's face. "I have an idea."
She let the thought settle for a moment before continuing.
"Someone wanted Rowan mistaken for a pervert, so they used my name to lure him out here. That's actually quite interesting."
Her smile grew slightly. "I've been looking for a good opportunity to duel him properly. To see what he's really made of."
She wanted to know what he was hiding -- the "secret" behind how he handled his one-turn-kill Dark Magician deck when it was being countered.
"Ahh, so Alexis wants to see inside that guy's..." Jasmine and Mindy exchanged a glance.
Both of them arrived at exactly the same wildly incorrect conclusion at exactly the same time.
Their expressions lit up with identical gossip energy.
...
"Looks like she's coming for a duel," Rowan muttered, catching fragments of the conversation drifting across the water.
He rubbed his chin, took his exit from behind the short tree before anyone could spot him, and quietly paddled the rowboat back out to the middle of the lake, putting a comfortable distance between himself and the dormitory.
About halfway across, he set down the oar and stopped.
He had time. He used it.
"System. Show me the exchange options."
A translucent screen materialized in front of him, and Rowan began scrolling through it while he waited for the inevitable message.
[System Shop (Refreshes randomly every two days, four options per cycle)]
Current options:
[Deck: Cyber Dragon Deck (Zane Edition)] -- 500 Points.
[Deck: Gravekeeper's Deck (Cursed Edition)] -- 1000 Points.
[Deck: Lava Golem Deck (Cursed Lockdown Build)] -- 1000 Points.
The fourth slot, previously occupied by Spirit Vision, was gone. Already redeemed.
The Cyber Dragon deck got a glance and nothing more. It was too normal. Too reasonable.
Completely out of place next to the other two. It had no business being on this list.
More importantly, even if Rowan used it, he would never match the bond between Zane and that deck.
He'd just be a poor imitation.
Now if it were the later, fully developed "degenerate Cyber Dragon" build from further down the timeline, that would be a different conversation.
But this version? Pass.
He had 1,500 Emotion Points sitting in reserve after farming three duels off Syrus earlier that day.
With funds like that, the only sensible move was to go for something worth it.
Rowan considered the two remaining options carefully.
The Gravekeeper's Cursed Edition was almost certainly a burn-focused OTK build.
One massive spike of blood pressure, over instantly.
The Lava Golem Lockdown was a slow build.
Pressure applied gradually, relentlessly, until the opponent's stress reached terminal levels.
Both had merits.
Rowan nodded to himself as he analyzed them, then made his choice with zero hesitation.
When it came to delivering a perfectly sustained, deeply unpleasant dueling experience, the second option was the clear winner.
There was no contest.
One small concern, though.
He glanced at the freshly redeemed deck sitting in his hand.
After the duel was over, would Alexis Rhodes come after him in person?
Rowan sat with that thought in silence for a moment.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
A short series of vibrations from his pocket. He pulled out his Duel Academy communicator and looked at the screen.
Right on time.
"We have Syrus. If you want him back, come to the lake behind the girls' dormitory..."