Chapter 176

"Honestly, these Seven Stars Shadow Duelists just refuse to give a person any peace."

By evening, once Rowan and Alexis had finished their lavish boxed dinner, they settled comfortably into the sofa in the little cabin's living room.

Rowan sipped happily at a cup of tea Camula had just brewed, letting his stomach settle.

Alexis sat nearby on the same sofa, a teacup cradled in both hands, poised as ever, and let out a tired sigh as she thought back over the string of events from the past few days.

In just a handful of days, they'd already run into a full five Shadow Duelists from the Seven Stars faction.

And the number of people laid up in the infirmary with injuries wasn't exactly small either.

Especially now, after Bastion's loss to Tania. The Spirit Keys currently in their hands had dwindled down to just the three held between herself, Rowan, and Chazz.

The looming crisis of the Sacred Beasts' seal being broken felt like it was only growing closer by the day.

"Honestly, I'm pretty fond of these Seven Stars Shadow Duelists." Rowan took a slurp of his tea, rubbing his chin thoughtfully as he delivered his thoroughly "balanced" assessment.

After all, with how much Emotion Points those Seven Stars duels kept handing him, it was hard to work up any real dislike for them.

"..." Alexis found herself briefly at a loss for words.

She still had no idea about the secret behind Rowan's system, of course.

But thinking it over carefully, comparing how he treated those Seven Stars Shadow Duelists as opponents against how he'd treated Jaden and Chazz before, Alexis suddenly realized there really wasn't much difference at all, as far as this guy was concerned.

Everyone was just another target to be tormented.

"Speaking of which, how's your brother doing?" Rowan asked, as if something had just occurred to him, his eyes lighting up faintly as he turned to Alexis.

Last night, she'd mentioned that her brother, Atticus, seemed to be on the verge of waking up.

And earlier today, after they'd wrapped up the whole business with Tania, Alexis hadn't come back to the cabin with him over lunch. She'd gone to the infirmary instead, to check in on him.

By rights, there should be some news by now.

"My brother, he..." Alexis, completely oblivious to the faint spark in a certain someone's eyes, let out a small, helpless sigh at the mention of him.

"He has woken up, and physically, he's mostly recovered from his injuries. But there's another complication now."

"He seems to have lost some of his memory. It's not just the Shadow Duel he can't remember. He couldn't even recognize my name."

"He couldn't even recognize your name...?" That caught Rowan slightly off guard.

As he recalled it, in the original course of events, Alexis's dorky older brother, Atticus, had indeed lost part of his memory, sealed away somewhere in the ritual space of that earlier Shadow Duel.

But at the very least, he'd still been able to recognize his own sister.

He hadn't expected the memory loss this time to be even a little worse than what he remembered.

To the point that he couldn't even recognize Alexis's name at all.

"Ahem. Alexis, how about I duel your brother once or twice, just a regular duel, and let him get a feel for something familiar?"

Rowan raised a fist and gave a small, deliberate cough, putting on his most serious expression as he made the suggestion.

"Might just shake something loose and bring it all back!"

The man really was, if he did say so himself, quite the healer of hearts.

"..." Alexis blinked, momentarily stunned.

Looking at the spark in Rowan's eyes, she asked, a little hesitantly, "Nurse Fontaine did say that some kind of familiar stimulus might help with the amnesia..."

"But would dueling you actually do anything, really?"

After all, dueling a certain someone tended to come with consequences.

She was more than a little worried her brother, only just starting to recover, might end up so worked up he'd land right back in the infirmary.

"I think it should help, at least a little." Rowan said it with reasonable confidence.

Whether Atticus would actually recognize Alexis again, that he couldn't promise. But recovering at least some of the memories from that earlier Shadow Duel, that seemed possible.

After all, even though the darkness now sealed away had been the one truly in control back then, Atticus's own soul had still been present through it all, still experienced everything that happened.

It was only because that darkness had since been sealed that his memory had gotten scrambled, leaving him amnesiac for the time being.

The memories specifically tied to his family, and to his life at Duel Academy, those were the ones sealed away in the ritual space back in that abandoned dorm.

Those would need to be recovered some other way before there was any real hope of jogging his memory of his dorky sister.

"In that case, I'll leave it to you to duel him tomorrow, then." Alexis nodded and said to Rowan.

"You can leave that part to me, no worries." Rowan nodded, smiling.

Racking up Emotion Points and doing a good deed at the same time? He was fully prepared to nominate himself for Financial Planner and Model Young Citizen of the Year.

"Well then, I'm off to soak in the hot spring bath."

Once she had Rowan's confirmation, Alexis's gaze softened as she looked at him, smiling as she rose from the sofa.

This guy could be a little twisted sometimes, sure. But at least when it came to things like this, he really was someone she could count on.