"It's true!"
At the seats in the school store, Syrus said excitedly.
"Last night, I got up groggily just wanting to go to the bathroom, but I accidentally walked to Professor Lyman's door..."
"Why would you end up at Professor Lyman's door if you just wanted to use the bathroom?" Chumley retorted. "Sy, can you be any more scatterbrained?"
"Shut up, the real point is coming up!"
Syrus lowered his voice, glanced around warily as if afraid of being overheard, and then continued mysteriously.
"When I got to the door, I saw it wasn't closed. Professor Lyman was sitting at his computer, communicating with someone." He spoke in a hushed tone, "I couldn't catch the details, but it sounded like something about 'ancient tombs,' and that it'd be a waste to just 'bury them.' There was also something about things that are still sleeping.
You have no idea, it sounded really scary."
"What nonsense are you talking about, did you just dream this up?" Jaden chuckled.
"Well, I was a bit groggy," Syrus scratched his head.
Kira was sitting at the same table, eating a golden egg bread from the shop and staying quiet—Jaden, as always, had skillfully drawn a golden egg bread, but he said he was sick of them from eating too many, so he gave it to Kira.
Hearing this, Kira was already calculating in his mind.
Looks like it's time for the extracurricular study.
This matches the plot from the original series. Professor Lyman would arrange an extracurricular activity to search for ruins on the island, but they'd end up triggering a mechanism and enter the Spirit World. There, they'd encounter the Gravekeeper spirits, and Jaden would have to duel.
But it wasn't a deadly shadow game—though the loser would suffer real pain during the duel, they wouldn't actually die.
Looking back, it was probably Professor Lyman's way of testing Judai's abilities—a specially arranged trial.
Now it seemed that the first semester was about to end, so it was just about time for this event.
Sure enough, during class that day, Professor Lyman announced the plan.
After a whole semester, Professor Lyman's alchemy class had driven off nearly all the students. Now, only about a dozen students still bothered to attend, leaving most of the classroom empty.
But Professor Lyman was a good guy—he never cared about absentees, just lectured to himself about things no one cared about, deliberately botched a few alchemy experiments, and muddled through the period.
The bell rang.
"What a great nap!"
Jaden, who had seemed to be sitting upright and listening seriously the whole time, stretched and opened his eyes.
Only then did Syrus realize that his big bro's eyes had been drawn on his eyelids with a pen—he'd been sleeping the whole time.
Syrus gasped, "So big bro was sleeping the whole time?"
"Well, that means it's time to eat," Jaden said cheerfully.
In his world, aside from card games, there was only eating and sleeping—how could he not be happy?
"Wait a moment, everyone, please take these with you," Professor Lyman took out a stack of papers.
"Eh?" Jaden wilted, "Is it homework?"
"No, it's the plan for this Sunday's extracurricular activity," Lyman replied. "There are many ruins hidden in this school, and Sunday's activity is to explore one of them.
Anyone interested can join."
The few students there looked at each other.
...
As expected, not many showed up in the end.
On one side was the Slifer Red trio led by Jaden; on the other, Kira, Alexis, and Misawa made up the research group.
Comments
The readers' comments on the novel: Who Let Him Play Yu-Gi-Oh!