Yu Yu Hakusho Fan Fiction / Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction / Magic Knight Rayearth Fan Fiction / Dragon Knights Fan Fiction ❯ Chicken Soup for the Anime Soul ❯ Yugi: My Childhood ( Chapter 2 )

~ Chapter One: Yugi: My Childhood ~

Hi! My name is Yugi Moto. I am currently sixteen years old. I live with my grandfather, Solomon Moto. My mother is dead and my father is in prison somewhere in another country. How that happened is what I'm about to tell you…

I was seven when everything started, the chain of events that changed my entire life. For good or bad I will never know. I was a careless child, popular, and had a great deal of friends. My mother, May, and my father, Jin, were high in social status in the community. My mother was helpful and nice, and my father always attended meetings, and aided decisions that would benefit the community.

But then… News came that the company my father was working at, ludicrous as it seems, was bought by another company. The company that my father worked at was not small, but never expanded as much as Microsoft and Nintendo had. So now I was heading down a bumpy road.

My father had lost his job, and was now in a great state of depression. My mother worked half the night and most of the day to support us. I did my best to not get in their way. A year passed, and our social status, everything, had changed. I no longer had any friends, it turned out all they wanted was to be seen with the `popular kid' in hope to change their place in school.

Finally, my father found a job. Doing what, he never told us. I had a growing suspicion that whatever job my father had found, no good was to come out of it. My mother never noticed, she was just relieved that we could support the family now without her doing all the work. I tried to tell her, but she told me that my father was doing well. And he was. Or at least, that's what he let on…

One night, when I was ten, my father came in, completely sloshed. I could practically smell the odor of booze oozing off of him. My mother was frantic, questioning my father. Where had he been? What was he doing? What on earth was he thinking coming home drunk? My father did something terrible. He harshly hit my mother on the face, and continued to beat her. Then, he prepared to begin to rape her. One glance from my mother, and I quickly ran to my room, intent on blocking the picture and sound. However, even though I had shut my door firmly, and pulled a pillow on top of my head, I could still hear her screams. The next morning my father had already left, and if no for the bruise on her cheek, it seemed as if the last night had never happened. Sadly, the next night he did it again, and again. At first, I thought my father was addled in the brains from all the drinks. However, when it became a nightly habit, it came clear to me that my father was doing this on purpose. I knew that the only thing keeping my mother from telling the authorities was because my father had threatened my mother that if she uttered one word about his, he would kill me. I had heard my father tell my mother that. Then, two weeks after the abuse had started, my father came after me.

He would beat me, and yell how worthless I was. The worst damage happened when he continuously hit a necessary area, the area that controlled how tall I should grow. He somehow destroyed it, and I was stuck the same height as I was now. As a ten year old. When he noticed the damage, and what it had done, he did not beat me as much. But the areas that he thought were unnecessary were brutalized even more. That started to scare me. I was afraid that he would ruin how I would look, even my brain. My mother would plead that my father leave me alone, but it was all in vain. He never listened to her.

Weeks passed, and I was eleven now. My mother was the only one who mentioned it, she had even offered to hold a secret party for me. But she never got that far. That night, my father came home flat out drunk. However, he grabbed my mother, and I began to run upstairs, afraid that he was going to rape her again. I heard a thunk, but I dismissed it as nothing. But a scream came to fast. Far to fast. I ran downstairs, and I saw what had happened. My mother was propped up against a wall, blood trickling down her head and chest. A knife lay by her side. My father was nowhere to be seen. I could only guess what happened. My father had thrown my mother against a wall, and stabbed her in her heart. I shivered, unaware of the tears rolling down my cheeks. My mother was dead.

I quickly ran to the police station, and explained everything to the officers before bursting into tears that lasted for hours. The Chief of Police conducted a search for my father. They found him at a bar, hysteric. At the station, my father was questioned, and he admitted that he had killed my mother, and beat me. Questioning further, police interrogated why he had done this. My father never explained. At the hearing, he was sentenced to prison for the rest of his life. Doctors and surgeons ran tests to make sure I was in health, but when I explained to them about my growth problem, they shook their heads. The nerves that my father had broke were never to heal. Never.

I was moved to Japan, where my grandfather from my father's side would be caring for me. I was afraid that he would treat me like my father had, but when I arrived, he treated me kindly, and admitted that he did not blame me for my father being in jail. "The past is the past," he had told me, "and in this case it's best to forget it."

So I grew up in Japan. My grandfather owned a game shop, called Turtle Game Shop, and I became obsessed with the games and puzzles he sold there. One attracted my eye the most, a golden box with hieroglyphics carved on the sides. Inside were dozens of gold pieces, shaped like a puzzle. My grandfather told me that the box said something along the lines of "whomsoever solves my puzzle will receive power unimaginable." To me, it sounded like a wish. I worked hard at solving it, but the Millennium Puzzle, as I called it, seemed impossible to solve. My grandfather said that no one had been able to solve the Millennium Puzzle, which tightened my resolves to work harder. Meanwhile, at my school, I had made a new friend, Anzu Mazaki. She has stayed my friend ever since we met in sixth grade.

Now I was in tenth grade at Domino High, and my bully problem was starting to grow. Two bullies caught my eye, Katsuta Jonouchi and Hitoro Honda. They were teaching me how to be a man, and I was thankful to them. One day, when everyone else was playing basketball, they came and took my box. I asked them to give it back, but they played `keep-away' with it. The only way I could get it back, they told me, was to hit them with all I had. When I refused, they called me a wimp, but before they could do more, Anzu came in. She told them to get lost, and they did. Anzu told me that those two were pushovers.

As I was walking home that day, the hall monitor Ushio told mw that he was now my bodyguard, whatever that meant. I thought he was mental. The next day however, Ushio called me to the back of the school. I was afraid that he would beat me up. However, when I rounded the corner, I was shocked to see Jounouchi and Honda scuffed up and covered with serious bruises. Ushio told me that for 200,000 yen I could beat up these people all I wanted. I refused, as my wish ran through my head. I wish for friends that I can count on, friends that can count on me. In the end, I was still supposed to pay up the money, or else I would learn whit ha hands on experience of torture with a knife.

That night, I emptied out all of my money, even that from my savings account, but I still didn't have enough. I didn't want to ask my grandfather for it, sale was hard for our store right now. Absentmindedly, my hand strayed for the golden box sitting on top of my desk. I took off the lid, and started working. I had reached the stage where I always got stuck, but surprisingly I got past it. This is a lot easier now, I thought, somehow the threat of Ushio seems to be motivating me. As I reached into the last the box, I was shaking. This was it. I was only one piece from- My thoughts ran off, as my hand frantically groped around the box trying to find the last piece. Where was it?! I checked my room, the whole entire house. But it was gone. I could feel a wave of tears coming. The piece was gone. Now I could never have my wish fulfilled. Just then, however, my grandfather came in with the last piece. He told me that a boy from my school had just come, and gave him the piece of the puzzle. Although it wasn't raining, he was dripping wet. I didn't stop to think who it was as I inserted the last piece.

"I hear that whoever solves the Puzzle will be filled with dark, mystical energies," I heard my grandfather say, before everything blacked out…

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millenniumspirit: So, what do you think? Next chapter will be Yami's first awakening after 5,000 years. This should be interesting…