YGOW: The Beginning of the End/Chapter 1

A New Journey
I stood firmly on the dried ground with both of my feet. Even though I was fully armored, I can still feel something bursting through my golden boots. It was not simply heat but something strange and deadly sensation.

This shouldn't happen, at least not today. Roran is located within the temperature region so we had four seasons. Today it was still winter, this means it was supposed to be snowing instead of having sunny day, melting the land, literally.

This extreme weather event shocked every villagers and bystanders who were in Roran, including myself. The unusual phenomena began to make me felt anxious. Just within an hour, every pieces of snow within my sight were consumed by the heat, leaving nothing but the scorched ground.

The snowman built by the kids around had thawed away. They cried, but I left them as I was aware that I couldn't do anything for them. More importantly, I can't ruthlessly communicate with strangers in order to protect my true identity being exposed.

Although there was no death, unless you want to count the snowman, I can feel that something was wrong, perhaps the whole thing was the sign of doomsday. I forcibly shook my head to remove these irrational imagination. I am not an expert in the geography field so I drove myself to my room, leaped to the bed and slept, covering my whole body with the white and clean blanket.

Despite telling myself to rest, my body just wouldn't listen. My curiosity had suffered me to insomnia. I woke up from my bed, took a brief bath, changed my clothes and began to refresh my mind. I didn't bother to clean the room since it was a hotel.

"But wait ..."

—''Where and how should I start the investigation! I guess I had no choice but to begin from zero.''

Just a second after I took a step out from the gate of the hotel, two average height men appeared in front of me. They were fully equipped with dazzling silver armor, covering most parts of their body and they wore a very unique medieval helmets, there were feathers attached on the top of the helmets.

I was not surprised with their sudden appearance, the reason was the same of why I knew they were male despite they were wearing helmet which shrouded their face. I was not guessing it by looking on their chest— but because ...

"Your Majesty, why are you leaving the hotel?"

Both of them spoke the same thing at the same time but I didn't feel surprise. Believe me, I had seen this more than thousand times in my palace. They were twins, both of them were my childhood friends and became my bodyguards afterward. The helmet with the red color feathers was Marquess Hong while the helmet with the blue color feathers was Marquess Lan.

"...I am going to find out what are the causes of this irregular weather ... and please call me Xing since we are not in the kingdom."

I spoke to them quietly to avoid the bystanders from hearing our conversation. My true identity as a King was a secret whenever I decided to travel around Roran, my beloved country. As a King, it is hard not to attract any extra attention and normally it will always contradict my original plan of visiting the place I intended to. Came to think of it, that incident happened recently, probably just a week ago.

"Your Majes— I mean Xing, why don't we start the investigation tomorrow?"

Hong told me without any hesitation, his voice showed the sign of fatigue.

"Why?"

I knew the reason but I still decided to ask him, I want him to admit that he was tired. I want to make fun of him. But my imagination didn't come true as Lan approached me and unarmed the piece of armor on his left arm.

"Xing, take a look."

He raised his left hand, moving it near to my eyes. I took a quick look on it but figured out nothing. There was only a simple metallic wristwatch worn on his left hand. It was an elegant wristwatch but it had nothing special.

"The watch ... is quite pretty but look, it has nothing to do with this topic."

I replied without thinking because I was pretty sure he was saying something not related to the current topic. One does not simply jump out of topic I doubt he was that dumb but it was probably because of inheritance. His elder brother, Hong, was a complete idiot after all—as I thought this, I found that he was glaring me and suddenly approached me.

"Not the watch, it is the ... wait, I mean look at the watch!"

Thanks for his "informative" reply, I became more confused. Hong knew his explanation won't solve anything so he held his brother hand and showed me his brother's watch once more.

"Take a close look!"

Unlike last time, I was serious this time, I moved my head towards the watch and took a very close look on it. But no matter how I examined it, it was still a simple wristwatch. ''Wait! This is a—— brand new watch.'', I muttered in my mind.

"Oh, this is the latest brand new watch, right? But what is the point of showing me a new watch?"

"Damn..."

Both of them gave up and had a cursing word flew out from their mouth, together. I wondered were they planning this or it was just a pure luck, but anyway this was the first time I heard them spitting vulgar word at the same time. I was pretty sure that they were really angry so I decided to take another look on the newborn wristwatch. I grabbed Lan's arm and gave all my focuses on his watch.

"Half-past six ..."

Without realizing, I uttered it with a very low volume. But it was enough to alert the twins. They raised up their heads, with grateful look on their face. It was like they had finally succeeded teaching a simple mathematics to a retarded kid.

"So you finally realized it?"

"Oh my god. You finally got it."

"Yeah, the day is nearly over and the night is coming. So I guess ..."

"Sleep."

Before I could even finish my sentence, both of them responded the same thing at the same time. They were perfectly synchronized. They were twins, so I was not really shocked, but just a little bit of annoyed. I guess you can call that envy if you think it is more suitable.

Both of them ran back into the hotel and slept, with speed equal to lightning, if not even quicker. I understood that they were really exhausted since they spent a whole day to complete the boxes of reports given by their superior, the fellow Dukes. I can't help even though I was a King.

They were supposed to be in the kingdom, sitting on the comfortable chair and enjoying high class tea while writing the reports, but they volunteered to follow me, to the rural village, staying in a worn-out hotel and most importantly didn't even complain a single word, not even once.

—And this was not the first time.

I felt I owed them something, something big. That's why I tried to compensate whenever I could. I treated them just like my siblings. But these were not enough. I still felt something was amiss, something— that I couldn't express.

I can't sleep, again, because of my insomnia. Thinking too much is a bad idea while sleeping. I tried to empty my mind by counting sheep leaping over a fence in my mind, the old little trick— but it was futile.

At this particular time, my door was gently knocked. I wondered who was it as I woke up from my bed and opened the door. It was them. Hong and Lan, standing right in front of me. Nothing surprised me until I saw a woman stood right behind them. She wore an elegant light blue color sleeveless shirt, a similar color short skirt, with a deep blue ankle-length pants beneath. No mistake, it was her, En.

Shinen, everybody called her En for short, was my childhood friend, one of my closest companion alongside Hong and Lan. Just like them, she followed me wherever I go. She was even more crazy than the latter.

I was astonished by this rare scene because En should be working for his assignment at the palace. It's true that she said she will come after she finished her works but it was quite difficult to believe that she completed them within a day. What a stupid and stubborn workaholic, but in the end, I felt grateful of having her accompanied me during my journeys.

"Xing, are you having insomnia?"

En broke the silence by initiating the conversation with a very blunt way. Hong and Lan just stood near her while curiously waiting for my answer.

"Yeah, isn't that obvious? It is extremely hard to fell asleep during the night, basically it happens everyday. You know this very well."

I told her while scratching my head. If I was not mistaken, I have never succeed on sleeping at night ever since I had this particular disorder. The strange part is she knew this very well so there was no point of asking me.

After I responded, immediately, she left. The twins also returned to their own room. I closed the door and slowly walked back to my bed.

But before I could even touch the soft mattress, someone knocked my door again. I rushed to the door and opened it. It was En, again.

"What is the problem?"

I asked her in a concerned tone. In my mind, I tried to look for the reason why she came to my room again. Did she forgot to tell me something important? Or probably she wanted to give me something. Maybe she wanted to pass me an emergency letter from the Dukes of the palace.

Between those few seconds, I operated my mind in the maximum state. But unfortunately, none of them were correct, not even close.

"Well, I forgot to tell you, I am going to stay in your room."

"Okay."

I replied her without hesitation. There was no reason to reject her. Why? Just like I said, she was one of my closest friend and we had shared a same bed more than thousand times. Of course, there were no sexual activity included, we were just very close friends. I treated her like my own sister.

Without saying any further, I helped her to move her luggage into my room, in the meantime showing myself as a gentleman. However, I regretted as she took the advantage, quickly jumped to my bed and slept without lending any help. After spending a couple of minutes, I had finally finished migrating her groups of luggage into my room.

I let out a sigh of relief.

As soon as I tidied up her luggage, I literally hopped to the highly resilient mattress and placed my head on the puffy pillow.

I expected her to scold at me after I tried to revenge but sadly she didn't. Though, she did said something.

"A goodnight kiss."— After saying those words, she kissed on my left cheek.

"Goodnight"— I responded by returning a kiss on her right cheek.

The exchange of kisses were normal for us. Same went for holding hands in public or hugging each other while sleeping. But believe me, both of us didn't have any romantic feeling on each other.

The bed was quite small but somehow we managed to sleep together on the same bed without problem. The solution we took was hugging each other. I still remembered what she told me when she suggested this way to me when we were still kid.

"Hugging each other while sleeping will prevent either of us from falling from the bed.", I silently smiled while reminded her naivety.

Inevitable, the insomnia came again. I pretended that I was sleeping so En don't have to worry about me.

"Xing, you don't have to feel sorry about us. We chose the path ourselves and we don't regret about it. That's what make us confidant."

Unexpected, she muttered an obscure phrase near my ear like a philosopher. I wondered how she realized I was not sleeping.

My attempted to reply but was too tired to do it. And I don't understand why did I felt extremely sleepy in a sudden. Before I could think any further, surprisingly, I fell asleep, for the very first time.