Fan Fiction / Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction ❯ The Devil's In The Details ❯ Chapter 3 ( Chapter 3 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

Disclaimer: As previously stated in the last two chapters, I do not own Yu-Gi-Oh! or any of the characters contained therein. They belong to Kazuki Takahashi.

Warnings: Some use of "four letter words", later some scenes of violence and dark occultism. Turn back now if either of these makes you uncomfortable.

“So you don’t remember anything that happened last night?”

Yuki thought for a moment, her brow furrowed in lines of deep concentration before she slowly shook her head. “No, not after I passed out. It’s kind of normal for me now, I guess.”

“Yuki-chan, how is that normal?!? Have you seen a doctor about that?”

“Calm down, Anzu. I know you’re worried about me and I appreciate it, really I do, but this isn’t the first time it happened. Actually, it’s been a more or less regular occurrence since I came out of that coma. The doctors said it was a ‘fugue’ state.”

“Fugue…oh, I think I read something about that once!” Anzu said, barely even registering that the girls were walking past the worried glances of Jonouchi, Honda, and Yugi and waving absently to them. “Isn’t that the technical term for it? Temporary amnesia brought on by stress?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“Then what Anzu told us about must’ve been more than enough to bring that on,” Jonouchi said as he, Yugi, and Honda leaned up against Anzu and Yuki’s desks wearing the most serious expressions that Yuki had seen from them. Granted, this was only her second day knowing them, but the grim expressions just didn’t seem to fit. “You okay, Kobayashi?”

“I’m fine, guys. Thanks, though.”

“You just let us know if this guy keeps bugging you,” Honda added. “Jonouchi and I’ll straighten him out.” There was a small chorus of cracking knuckles, and Yuki was hard-pressed not to laugh.

“Guys, I’ll be fine. He just caught me off guard yesterday, that’s all. It won’t happen again.” The other four exchanged uncertain and slightly worried looks between each other, but they let it drop. Wait a minute, only four? “Does anyone know where Ryo-kun is?”

*************

Ryo felt like shit. Scratch that, he felt like something that the proverbial cat had chewed up, spit out, and then dragged back in.

First, it had been coming home the previous night to find that the spirit of the Millennium Ring was back and as much of a pain in Ryo’s ass as ever. Hearing his “shakuchi-nin” talk about getting reacquainted with Yuki was truly creepy, even if Ryo hadn’t been fairly sure that the spirit wasn’t interested enough in his friend to carry through with the idea. She didn’t have any of the seven Millennium Items, so therefore she was safe. He hoped.

Then there was the almost complete lack of sleep that night. His shakuchi-nin had completely denied that he was responsible for the truly horrifying nightmares that had plagued the scant hour that Ryo had been able to sleep, and something in Ryo’s gut didn’t doubt that the spirit was telling the truth about that. Taking over his body at inopportune times and getting into fights with the spirit of the Millennium Puzzle was the tomb robber’s style; sabotaging Ryo’s sleep wasn’t.

To top it all off, he had woken with a headache the size of Mount Fuji. The aspirin weren’t helping, and neither was the fact that he was going to be late to school. Needless to say, Ryo Bakura was not the happiest of campers when he finally arrived at class.

He mumbled his apologies to the teacher and slunk over to his seat, smiling weakly at his friends’ concerned gazes. The aspirin he had taken still hadn’t kicked in, and he wasn’t looking forward to the barrage of questions about his health or his shakuchi-nin that would probably come around either recess or lunch break. So, with a soft sigh of reluctance, Ryo resigned himself to taking notes and at least attempting to pay attention.

*************

Ryo did not look well. That was the first impression, probably a correct one, that crossed Yugi’s mind when his white-haired friend had stumbled into class about half an hour late. Ryo had never been late in Yugi’s memory. Really, he was either at school or he wasn’t. It was just…it wasn‘t right for Ryo to be late.

//I don’t want to alarm you, but do you feel like we’re being watched?//

/Oddly enough, that’s not quite as scary as it should be./ Yugi inwardly smirked at the silent testament to how strange life after the Puzzle had gotten, surreptitiously looking around to see if the source of his yami’s discomfort was in the room. He probably wouldn’t have noticed Yuki, if it weren’t for the fact that her starlight-silver eyes locked with his for a second before sliding away to fix what seemed like an icy glare at Ryo’s back. /That’s what Anzu was talking about./

//I thought you said that your acquaintance held no hard feelings about having her soul sealed by the spirit of the Ring?//

/I’m also really sure her eyes were hazel when class started./

//Perhaps she wasn’t being entirely truthful with you yesterday. There’s more going on here than meets the eye, Yugi.//

He turned again, looking to Yuki’s face to check her eyes. His acquaintance’s face was turned towards the front of the room, almost eager in her note-taking. She seemed to sense that he was watching her, sending him a bright smile that reached her hazel eyes. Yugi flushed slightly and turned back to his own work, wondering about what he had seen.

*************

“Geez, Ryo, you look like somethin’ the cat dragged in.”

How nice it would have been to just be able to start banging his head against the desk right now! Instead of following that inclination, Ryo just rubbed at his eyes. “Then apparently I look as awful as I feel, Honda.”

“Is it…?”

“No, it isn’t. It’s not his style in any event. At least not from what you all have told me.”

“What’s not whose style?” Yuki asked as she entered the conversation. She held up two small bottles of water in response to the unasked question that Ryo was sure was blatant in his eyes, placing one on the desk in front of him with a small smile. “You sure you shouldn’t be sleeping this bug off, Ryo-kun?”

“I don’t feel that horrible, Yuki-chan. Thank you for your concern all the same.”

She just shrugged. “If you say so.”

“Ne, Yuki-chan, did you tell Ryo yet?”

“Tell me what?”

Yuki sighed heavily, looking over at Anzu for a second for some reason. “Well, that is…”

“You knew a Suzuki-senpai at your old school, right Ryo?” Anzu took over for Yuki.

Ryo couldn’t help wincing slightly at remembered slights. “If the Suzuki-senpai we’re thinking of is the same, then yes. May I ask why?”

Yuki spoke this time, absently massaging her right wrist. “Suzuki-senpai is in Domino. Anzu-chan and I ran into him yesterday when we walked over to my apartment building. He was acting really strangely, almost like he was an entirely different person.”

“How so?”

Anzu reached over and plucked Yuki’s left hand from her wrist, "accidentally" pushing the material of the pink jacket sleeve up just enough to reveal bruises that seemed to distinctly resemble human fingers. “Really, Yuki-chan, you shouldn’t mess with those. They won’t heal as quickly if you do.”

“Gomen, Anzu-chan,” Yuki replied, coloring slightly. “I didn’t realize I was doing it.”

“Suzuki-senpai did that? Why?”

“I don’t know, Ryo-kun. He wanted to take me out to get something to eat and catch up on old times, I politely declined, and then he grabs my wrist in a vise grip and tells me I’m not going anywhere before I blacked out. It was so strange; Suzuki-senpai isn’t normally like that as far as I remember. He was always so nice…”

“He did have something of a crush on you, Yuki-chan.”

“He what?”

“Had a crush on you. I think you were the only one who didn’t know.”

“Come to think of it, he did tell me that you were his and that we couldn’t have you, Yuki. It was getting really scary.”

“That’s not a crush, that’s a stalker.” Honda looked between the other three boys for a second, his attention focusing back on Ryo again. “This guy ever seem that type to you, Ryo? He probably wasn’t on his best behavior all the time around you like he would’ve been around Yuki.”

“Well, he did lead the crusade when it came to the opinion that I was the one who had put Yuki into her…condition at the time. I wasn’t aware that he was that unbalanced, though. I do have to agree with Yuki, it doesn’t seem like him. He was always a very controlled individual.”

“But what’s done is done and now you know he’s in town so we can move off of this topic.” Yuki clapped her hands together, almost as though she were closing a book in Ryo’s mind. “So, Yugi, Anzu was telling me your family owns a game shop?”

*************
There weren’t many things that could shock Kobayashi Yuki very easily. Seeing Suzuki-senpai just outside the gates of Domino High School with his shoulders slumped and a hangdog expression on his face was one of the few things that could that day.

“Oi, Kobayashi, you gonna be okay?” She had to stifle a laugh again at Honda and Jonouchi, both of whom were looking over towards the individual that she’d been inadvertently staring at for the past moment or two. “That’s Suzuki, right?”

“Yeah, but something tells me I’ll be fine. It’s a public place, right?”

“So was the street outside your place,” Honda said with a wry smirk. “Hey, Jonouchi, why don’t we wait for her a second? Just make sure he doesn’t try anything with her again.”

“Sounds like a good idea.”

Yuki just rolled her eyes heavenward with a small smile and an expression of mock pleading on her face. “So now I’ve got a pair of bodyguards, is that it?”

“Hey, a buddy of Ryo’s is a buddy of ours. Go ahead and get what you need to done.”

“Like I need your permission.” She was fully aware of their watchful eyes on her as she walked over to Suzuki, glad for it even though her gut told her that this wouldn’t be a repeat of yesterday. “Suzuki-senpai.”

“Ah, Kobayashi-san…” he scuffed a toe into the pavement, an oddly child-like motion for the young man who had to be at least a full six inches taller than she. “Ano, Kobayashi-san…I’d like to apologize for what happened yesterday. I haven’t been…myself, and I’m afraid that I may have done something unforgivable to you yesterday. Please, accept this unworthy one’s apology.”

“So that’s why you’re really here, then?”

“Hai. My aunt suggested that I come and live with her for a while during my treatment. I just came into town yesterday.”

“I kind of figured that.” Yuki sighed heavily and ran a hand through her hair in a gesture that was characteristic to anyone who knew her. “You know, I never could stay upset with any of you.”

“You mean…?”

“Apology accepted, Suzuki-senpai. Please understand, though, that I won’t exactly be inclined to be alone with you until your treatment is finished.”

“I understand completely,” Suzuki said with a bright smile that seemed to light up his entire face. “Thank you, Kobayashi. I’d ask if you and a friend or two or five wanted to go and hang out, but I must be going. I’ve got a session starting in about ten minutes and I really don’t want to be late.”

“It’s all right, Suzuki-senpai. I hope your session goes well.”

“Aa, thank you. Ja ne.”

“Mata ne.” She waved as he started off, turning a smile of reassurance back to Jonouchi and Honda as they approached. Apologies were good, reasons were even better, and life now definitely seemed to be pretty close to the best. Just the way she liked it.

************************************************************** **********

Gomen - Short form of "Gomen nasai". "I'm sorry" in English.

Ja ne - Roughly equivalent to the English “See you later”.

Mata ne - See Ja ne.

Senpai - One’s senior at school or work. The term is often converted into a suffix, like “-chan” or “-san”.

Shakuchi-nin: Tenant. The spirit of the Ring refers to Ryo in the manga as his “landlord”, so it seems only logical (in my twisted mind at least) that Ryo might begin to think of the spirit as a somewhat unwanted tenant.

/…/ - Yugi to Yami Yugi
//…// - Yami Yugi to Yugi

************************************************************* ***********
Author’s Notes:
Sorry it took so long to update! I was having a real devil of a time (no pun intended) coaxing this chapter out to the front without the latest issue of the manga, not to mention that real life hit in the form of more hours at work than I really care for. But it’s all about the paycheck, right? And I digress.

Reviews and constructive criticism are welcomed but not necessary for the continuation of this story. I write for my own enjoyment, not (necessarily) anyone else’s.

However, if I’ve gotten something wrong, if a character seems particularly OOC, if there are any stupid little spelling or grammar errors that Works and my eyesight haven’t caught in proofreading, please please let me know and let me know what’s wrong and/or why. This is my first fic (as I’m sure is fairly apparent), so almost any form of feedback is appreciated. Flames and “You suck” reviews will be copied, posted, and lampooned in this section in later chapters.

Arigato gozaimasu, minna!
Holyllama