CHAPTER 15
Ken's relationship with his parents was... complicated, to say the least.
Dad's a gambler who loves betting a huge portion of his salary away on professional Duel Monsters games using illegal betting sites that require a large deposit to gamble since betting is very frowned upon in this society. Hell, he doesn't even know his father's job, other than the fact that he makes really good money, which was just too bad.
To be perfectly honest, gambling on YGO games is not really that bad, not that he endorses it; of course, he hates gambling with a passion, but since you can easily see who wins in pro Duel Monsters duels if you have a good sense of the meta and play styles of the pros, the odds of winning a bet are theoretically higher.
The problem was that his dad was someone who was horrendous in the game. Seriously, what kind of fool would bet on YGO duels when they don't even know how to see advantages and mistakes?
Now, Ken would admit that he was pretty decent at the game, so he tried helping his father, who was watching a duel in the living room a long while back on the day he wasn't outside, in one of the duels that dad publicly stated would win the family hundreds of thousands easily, so Ken silently watched the duel from afar while his father tapped on his phone to bet.
Pro duels usually show quite a lot of information about the duel, from the record of wins and losses of each player to cards drawn into their hands, their deck cards at the side, information about a card being played, etc. And right off the bat, he could already sense that the opposition had a better hand than the one his father betted on.
Sure, the player his father bet on had higher statistics with a record of 10W-3L this quarter, while the opponent had a 9-6 record, but the statistics don't involve luck.
He bricked. One Level 7 and Level 2 monster, two spells, and two trap cards. Nothing to start anything, and no hand traps to even counter anything thrown at him. It was bad, since in his deck profile, there were no cards that could save him from this brick except for Pot of Greed, a staple in every deck at this point in time.
It makes you wonder why Pegasus and his balance team haven't banned that card yet.
Meanwhile, the opposition had a balanced hand, with enough synergy to do a starter from a ROTA (Reinforcement of the Army) that could snowball since he was playing a control deck that consistently shuts down the back row with enough setup.
So, as the turns started piling up, Ken quickly told his father to change his bet or at least withdraw from it since the result was clear that player A (he didn't really care about their names) would definitely lose the duel.
Instead, he got berated by his father, saying that he had more "sense" and "feeling" of the game since he was much older and more experienced than a 7-year-old, and that he shouldn't be talking bullshit when it was clear that player A would crush player B with his boss monster, a fucking Archfiend's Manifestation.
Like, who plays that with only one summoned skull in their deck? Sure, he had some spell and trap cards to boost the effectiveness of the card, but he doesn't have the resources in his damn deck to even use its effect properly with no extenders or flexibility at all. At this point, it's just a beat stick of 2500 ATK.
Sometimes he wonders how he even got pro status until he realizes at that moment that people in this world are horrible at pro duels other than anime-related characters.
Eventually, after a few turns where nothing major happened, player B finished the duel by using Dinomorphia Frenzy to get his boss monster, Dinomorphia Rexterm, to lower his own LP to basically triple-digit.
Dinomorphia Rexterm, at the cost of half of your LP, makes all monsters your opponent currently controls equal to your LP until the end of the turn. Since the monsters that player A had lowered to three-digits and his own LP was close to half from attacking with Archfiend cards, with attacks from two monsters, the match ended in favor of player B.
The silence from his father was so uncomfortable that Ken had to strategically retreat back to his room without a word. They didn't talk after that ordeal, and his monthly allowance was cut in half for almost a whole year because of his pettiness.
His mother was, thankfully, not as bad as his father. Well, kind of. Alcoholic woman that goes out every night and comes back drunk to the sky. Not really a good image, but hey, she does let him do whatever.
To be fair, most of the time she is either drunk or out with her "friends," who most likely are people she's seeing, so it's not really letting him do whatever but instead don't giving a shit. His father has some too, from what Ken has overheard. It's not like both are loyal to each other; it makes him wonder why they'd even marry and have a kid if they were just going to do this.
Because his esteemed mother is always out of the house, they don't interact much, other than her wanting something done in the house or to fetch medicine and more beer. You know, now that he thinks about it, he does most chores at home without even realizing it, since it was mainly what he usually did back in his original world when he was living alone.
Food for thought.
Anyway, that's his dysfunctional family. What's the reason he's explaining it so deeply? It's because of what happened a year ago when Pegasus met up with him for the first time. Things happened: he fought against Pegasus, signed a contract for VN (Virtual Nexus), played against Muto fucking Yugi (still a shocker), and then he got the pod for VN.
The last one was the focus here. With the pod being installed in my room, it caused some sort of shift in the family. His mother started talking to him more and reduced time spent outside, and his father was at home more, though his betting was still a problem.
Suspicious, but he didn't really care at the time.
And then it happened.
A few weeks after his debut with the Housemaids, when he was at home playing some FPS shooter in his free time, his mother suddenly called him down to the living room. That was pretty normal since she usually calls him down to do chores, but what sent alarm bells in his head were the voices of people other than his father in the house.
His mother had never really brought her men into the house, and the weirder thing was that his father was in the house too; no one would risk anything, even for a quickie. It's a little much, but just in case...
He walks to his drawer and opens it, shuffling the items in it before grabbing out the object that he was looking for. Pegasus was a person of paranoia, which was why he somehow had a taser in his arsenal at the age of only 13. Was it a crime? Yep, but Pegasus was more powerful than he thought, using his connections and money to make it so that it was legal for him alone.
Seriously, Ken really underestimated Pegasus' political power in this world.
Hiding both his hands and the taser in his hoodie's front pockets, he walked down the stairs to the living room, only to be greeted with two large men wearing concealing black and a salesman-dressed person who rubbed his hands together in between. His parents were at the side of the living room, watching silently as the person in the center asked.
"Yusou Ken, I presume?"
"Uh, yeah, who's asking?"
His eyes darted to his parents, who had large smiles on their faces, sounding more alarm bells in his head. His right arm gripped the taser tighter as the two men started walking towards him.
"Nobody important, Yusou Ken, though you will be taken to such a person soon. Take him."
That sent a chill down his spine, causing him to activate his taser and brandish it towards the two men who stopped in place at the sight. His brain kicked into overdrive as he tried to think of a way to get out of this situation when suddenly he heard something moving towards him at a high speed.
He could barely move his head to look at the perpetrator before a sharp pain exploded at the back of his head. The pain was so unbearable that his limbs instantly went numb, with him dropping his taser to the ground. The last thing that he saw was his father, with a large grin on his face, holding onto a metal bat in his hands before he fell face first onto the floor, his vision fading to complete darkness.
============================================
Come support me on my Pa tre on where I post early chapters (sometimes) and new story ideas not on any websites yet.
There's currently extra chapters that I haven't posted, want to stockpile them beforehand, so if you want to read early come join!
pa tre on . com /damaine_n
(remove all the spaces)
============================================