Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction ❯ How to Save a Life ❯ How It Was: Three ( Chapter 3 )

We went to England - like he wanted, and I dreaded. I suppose it wasn't so bad for the first month or so. We did the usual things couples did: he met my father; we rearranged things in the house so that it suited us better; we went shopping together; we laid out by the beach after sunset. It was nice for the first month.

 

But then we started school. Everything changed after we started school. I was normal, but he became a different person once he arrived on school grounds. He wanted to fit in with the popular kids - was willing to do anything to fit in with them, even if it meant pushing me away and making fun of me behind my back, like the rest of the student body.

 

And I didn't even try to put a stop to it at first. I always tried to make up excuses for him, like - it's his first time going to a real school, or he's just trying to live his life. When the attitude he carried at school followed him back into our home, and he started distancing himself from me even there, it became increasingly difficult for me to keep defending him.

 

I don't want to get into too much detail. As you can imagine, this wasn't the best time in my life. But I will tell you this: He ended up betraying me. Twice. And yet, both times, I gave him another chance - because I was so desperate to keep him with me, I loved him so much. Another chance, another chance - always another chance. I gave him so many chances to prove himself, and every time I thought he was serious, that he really did want to make our relationship last, he reverted back to his cruel and selfish ways.

 

Another chance, another chance...

 

I gave him so many chances. What did he give me in return? Love? HA! I was the only one that ever loved in that relationship.

 

Oh, sure, maybe he said the words, but they were hollow - insincere, empty. Perhaps he meant them the first one or two times he spoke them, but after that, “I love you” just became a vehicle for sex. I had a weakness for those three words, and he knew it. Whenever he spoke them, whispered them into my ear, I melted - became putty in his hands, and put up no fight against whatever he wanted to do to my body - because he loved me, or he said he did.

 

“I love you.”

 

I said it every day to him, many times a day, and I meant it every time I said it.

 

I love you.

 

I love you.

 

I love you.

 

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Ryou,

Things aren't working out.

- Malik.

 

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But I love you!!

 

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Malik blinked, before laughing.

 

"No you don't." he replied surely, looking at Ryou with now sparkling and positive lilac orbs.

 

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He thought it was a joke, my love for him. I thought it was a joke, finding that note taped to the front door. I started laughing when I first saw it; I thought he was pulling a prank on me. I searched the whole house for him, and only after I discovered that our shared closet had been emptied of his clothing did the realization of the situation set in.

 

That was it. The final betrayal; the one I couldn't give another chance to make better. The end. The end of our relationship, but not the end of my love for him.

 

I'd never cried so hard in my life.

 

Malik transferred schools. I didn't see him around town very often, but when I did I noticed he was always accompanied by a tall brunette teenager far more attractive than me. There were rumors at school saying Malik had moved in with a guy from a neighboring school - that they were going steady, and had been for several months.

 

It'd been going on right under my nose and I hadn't noticed. I was still blinded by my hope while he was screwing someone else - probably under my own roof, too.

 

I moved in with my father, unable to stand living in the house Malik and I shared due to the memories - pleasant and unpleasant - lurking around every corner. The house sold almost immediately; the memories moved with me to my father's house.

 

It was just before my high school graduation when my father got sick. I came home from school one day to discover him collapsed on the ground, unconscious. The doctors said it was a heart attack, but upon further testing discovered it was something much worse - hypertensive cardiomyopathy, a disorder of the heart due to untreated high blood pressure.

 

He would need to be hospitalized and regularly monitored, for there was a high possibility of the condition worsening.

 

I couldn't leave him alone during his time of need. He was my father. I didn't care how many schools had accepted me anymore - I denied them all. I was going to take care of my father, the last person I had left in the world.

 

To please my father, who was so disappointed in me for not going to college, I enrolled in a community college and took morning classes several days a week. And I got a job working on the janitorial staff of a nightclub. It didn't pay much, but all the proceeds went to my father's medical bills because I didn't want him spending his life's earnings.

 

It was on cool February night, about nine months later, that my life changed forever.

 

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“Psst! Ryou! Ryou!”

 

The white-haired teenager paused in his work and looked up as he heard his name being loudly whispered. By the front entrance of the club he noticed a girl with synthetic purple hair standing in the doorway, waving her hand in a beckoning manner. She, Miho, was a work-friend of his. A work-friend - a companion at work, but not really a friend.

 

Ryou blinked and set down his wet rag, making his way over to her.

 

“What is it?” he asked, raising an eyebrow as she grabbed on to his arm. “I... I'm not finished `till twelve.”

 

“Shh! Follow me,” Miho ordered, leading him out the door despite his protests.

 

“What? Why?”

 

“Just hurry up. There's a limo waiting. You can make a hundred bucks in half an hour!”

 

Chocolate-brown eyes widened and a confused frown appeared on the pale teen's face. Miho dragged him down the street. Parked at the end of the lane, as promised, was a sleek black limousine.

 

Miho walked up to the left rear passenger door and tapped on the window. It rolled down, and whoever sat inside exchanged several words with her before rolling the window back up. Giving a satisfied smile, she waved Ryou over. Hesitantly he came to stand beside her.

 

“Get in,” she instructed, just as the door opened. “You can thank me later.”

 

In spite of his better judgment, Ryou slid into the vehicle. Miho didn't follow. The door slammed shut and the limo sped off towards an unknown destination - which later revealed itself as the most prominent five-star hotel in town.

 

Before stepping out, he was presented with a change of clothes - for, according to the man in the car, a custodian uniform did not flatter his figure. These new garments, however, revealed everything worth revealing in the most elegant of ways.

 

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I was taken to the top floor - the penthouse suite. Waiting in the room already was a boy slightly older than myself, donned in clothing much more masculine yet just as licentious as the abomination I had been forced into. He wasn't exceptionally handsome, but he was a god compared to the man seated on the bed beside him.

 

The second man was dressed in nothing more than a silk robe. His thinning salt-and-pepper hair was combed back in the fashion typical of an elderly rich man and from his lips dangled a lit cigar. He smirked at me as a stepped forward. I knew as he patted the mattress what Miho had gotten me into - what I supposedly would thank her for later.

 

The elderly man, who was a quite wealthy and well-known business tycoon, wanted to watch me and the other boy have sex, and then he wanted to have sex with me. There was no room for argument. I couldn't very well tell him that this was all a mistake, that I was tricked into being there. I could only do as told.

 

I cried at first. Of course I cried. I cried all the way home, in the taxi my first `client' paid for. What had my life become? Here I was, whoring myself. I would certainly go to hell, and I hadn't even wanted to go through with it in the first place.

 

Later that night, alone in bed, I contemplated it. Was it really such a bad thing after all? I was out of there in less than an hour, with more than a hundred dollars in my pocket. And I hadn't even needed to do anything. All I needed to be was a doll, a puppet that they could do whatever they want with. Just had to lay there, doing nothing... feeling nothing.

 

It was the easiest money I'd ever made in my life. Much easier than scrubbing toilets or washing tables at a disgusting club.

 

And the best part - no-one else had to know about it. I could do this secretly. Tell my father I'd gotten another job to earn more money; he'd never suspect anything. So what if it was shameful? It was the closest thing to love I'd ever get. And it paid.

 

Besides... I make a good puppet. By that point I was already used to going through the motions of love without receiving any.

 

Sex was meaningless. Love was meaningless.

 

You might think it's pathetic, but it's my life. It's the path I've chosen.

 

That's how I officially began my other job.

 

But, you know... I think it started even before that night.

 

I think it started with a note taped on my door.

 

Ryou,

Things aren't working out.

- Malik.