Chapter 25
"If we're meeting on the lake behind the dormitory, I don't even need to paddle back."
Rowan tucked the communicator away and settled comfortably in place, perfectly content to wait.
"Huh? Rowan, you're already out here?"
He had been expecting a boat from the Obelisk Blue side. Instead, a familiar voice came from behind him.
He turned to find a chestnut-haired figure in red paddling up beside him, looking pleasantly confused.
Jaden. Of course.
And seated behind Jaden in the same boat, working the rear oar with the earnest effort of someone who took everything at face value, was a heavyset upperclassman with a notably large nose - the kind of face that, at first glance, called to mind a very sincere koala.
He wore the red-and-white of an older Slifer Red student.
Chumley. Syrus and Jaden's other roommate.
"How did you two get here already?" Rowan asked, genuinely puzzled.
Even if Alexis had sent messages to multiple people to make sure Rowan showed up, the timing made no sense.
They should have only just left their room.
"Syrus sent something a little while ago," Jaden said, pulling out his communicator with a slightly helpless expression.
"Just a few words. Said to come rescue him."
He had no idea what was going on.
Rowan glanced at the screen. SOS. Blue girls' dorm.
"Not bad, actually," he said, mouth quirking.
Slipping a distress signal past Alexis and both of her friends while sitting bound and under watch - that took a certain kind of resourcefulness.
"Did Syrus's message bring you out here too, Rowan-san?" Chumley asked from the back of the boat.
"More or less. Though the message I got wasn't from Syrus."
Rowan cleared his throat and delivered the line with complete composure.
He was not going to mention that he had been sitting on this lake for a while already and knew exactly how everything had unfolded.
"There - someone's coming!" Jaden suddenly straightened, eyes fixed on the far shore.
Rowan turned.
A boat was being rowed toward them from the direction of the Obelisk Blue dormitory.
Syrus was at the oars, pressed into service as the vessel's reluctant crew.
At the back of the boat, Alexis stood with Jasmine and Mindy flanking her.
"Big bro," Syrus called out, voice cracking slightly with the accumulated misery of the evening.
"Syrus - what happened?"
Jaden stared at the rope still around Syrus's wrists, then at the three girls behind him, visibly struggling to construct a theory.
"It's... kind of a long story. Or maybe a very short one. I'm not sure."
Syrus's expression was the textbook portrait of a man who had absolutely no idea how to explain himself.
Being lured out by the most obviously fake love letter in living memory, failing to read it fully, and then getting caught holding the bag for a black-wetsuit phantom who had disappeared into a lake - none of that was going to come out of his mouth in front of Rowan.
"You got here faster than I expected," Alexis said, looking at Rowan with mild surprise.
They had barely pushed off from the shore. She let it pass without dwelling on it and offered a small smile.
Her eyes, though, already carried the unmistakable edge of someone ready to duel.
Jaden and Chumley's arrival she attributed to Rowan bringing them along.
It didn't occur to her that Syrus had managed to smuggle out a distress signal, or that Rowan might have been out here before any of them.
The timing lined up well enough. She assumed they had simply rowed quickly.
A neat tangle of coincidences covering for everything.
"So." Rowan cleared his throat with practiced innocence.
"What exactly is going on?"
"This one snuck behind our dormitory trying to peep at the bath," Jasmine said, after a quick glance from Alexis.
"If the Academy finds out, expulsion is pretty much guaranteed."
"What?!" Jaden and Chumley both went rigid.
"I already said I wasn't peeping! I was tricked into coming here! And the one actually doing something suspicious was the guy in the black wetsuit who jumped into the water!"
Syrus protested with helpless desperation.
"Whether that's true or not," Alexis said, the faint smile returning, "the fact remains that Syrus was found behind the Obelisk Blue girls' dormitory. That's not easy to explain away regardless."
She turned her gaze to Rowan and let it settle there with clear intent.
"But if you duel me and win, we forget the whole thing. What do you say?"
"Then let me duel you!" Jaden's hand shot up immediately, duel disk already rising, eyes bright with pure competitive hunger.
"No." Alexis didn't even glance at him. "Right now, you're not who I'm interested in."
Her full attention stayed on Rowan.
Jaden had beaten Crowler - he was a worthy opponent, no question.
But what she wanted to see right now, the thing pulling at her curiosity, had nothing to do with him.
"Are you serious?!" Jaden clutched his own head, expression collapsing into despair.
A top Obelisk Blue duelist was right in front of him, challenge issued, duel about to happen - and somehow he was not the one in it.
For someone who lived to duel, being the one left sitting on the sidelines was a suffering that went beyond words.
The boats drifted quietly on the dark water.
Every eye turned to Rowan.
Waiting for his answer.
-------------------------
Patreon Advance Chapters: patreon .com / ElvenKing20