Tomorrow is my one year anniversary of fanfiction writing! Can you believe it? It feels like just yesterday when I sat down and typed out the little three-hundred-word prologue to my first fic. I feel so nostalgic…

Yu-Gi-Oh! © Kazuki Takahashi

"Would you clean the room, Yugi?" Yugi said, mocking Atem's deep voice with startling accuracy. "Why do I have to do it?" he asked himself, exasperated.

A small part of him told him the truth: Atem was always the one who cleaned the room. Yugi had to protest that it was because Atem was always the one who cared, but it didn't matter. If he wanted to be a good friend, then he had to clean his room when it was his turn.

Atem, who had been there with him earlier, nearly had to pry some completely useless items out of Yugi's pack-ratting fingertips—a trait he had inherited from his grandfather—in order to toss it into the trash.

It wasn't as if Yugi didn't like Atem. That was completely ridiculous. They had been close friends for years and had even shared a body for a span of time. That didn't mean that they could easily share a room, though.

Yugi looked under his bed. He hadn't been down there in ages, and a number of things had been accidentally kicked down there. That was the one place Atem had never touched. Yugi reached under and pulled out enormous amounts of lost items like toys, books, and… a diary.

He recognized that diary immediately. He had never wanted Atem to find it. He couldn't imagine what Atem would think of him after he read Yugi's mother's scribbling. Resentment, disgust, fear? No, never fear. Atem wasn't afraid of anything. But their relationship would never be the same, and Yugi couldn't bring himself to put the friendship they shared in jeopardy.

Yugi, feeling nostalgic, decided to open the diary up and read it while he had a moment to himself.

The third moon and the seventh sun, year 521 of the second age.

Ichigo and I just arrived in Shentone a few hours ago. Before we checked in at our hotel, I had to see what all my friends had told me to see. The Senmarian Towers. Oh, they were so beautiful! They are all made of a mysterious white stone that glows in the dim Shentone light. They reached higher then I could possibly see. No one knows why or how they were made because they are too old. I hope Yugi will see them too, one day. I'll have to take him back here when he is old enough to appreciate them.

It is very dark here, even during the height of noon. The thick Shentone clouds hover over us perpetually, casting a black-grey shadow on everything. And the entire city is a swamp, although it's a lovely swamp. It rains nearly every day, and it's horribly humid. No wonder the Poya are such grumps! It must be the weather.

Ichigo has confined me to my inn room while he's out. As if I couldn't take care of myself! Just because I'm pregnant doesn't mean I'm helpless! I've saved his pink hide more times than I could count. Poya do have a tendency to alienate Loramysha, yes, but that's nothing new. …I hope that when Yugi grows up, he will not hate me because of the choice I have made. I love his father with all my heart, regardless of our differences. I wonder if he will feel alone in the world, though, because he is one of the few of his kind.

Yugi closed the book and fought to restrain tears. "I don't hate you, Meina…" he said, a bit of his native tongue slipping in with his fluent English. "I could never… I do fit in somewhere, and I have friends. Though I sometimes wonder if they would still be my friends if they knew…"

Yugi slipped his diary into a discreet slit in the mattress, where it was cozily tucked between the outer cover and the springs. He had made that slit when he was younger as a hiding place for small presents. That diary was something private of his, and he wasn't going to share it. But every time he read the words, he felt a sting of sorrow in his heart. He wished that he had gotten more time to get to know her. Her writing told him that she was a fierce, powerful woman, and no man or anything else was going to get in her way.

Yugi smiled softly as he thought of her face. "She was so beautiful…"

"Yugi?" Atem said, walking into the room. He noticed the somber look on Yugi's face. "Is something wrong?" he asked, concerned.

Yugi shook his head. "No, no, nothing's wrong…" he said. Nothing was wrong. Grief was just a part of life; it came up every once in a while to remind a person of those who came before.

Atem could tell he was lying. "Are you sure?" he asked, sitting next to Yugi on the floor.

"Sure," Yugi confirmed.

"Are you sure that you're sure?" Atem asked, grinning.

Yugi couldn't help but giggle. "I'm sure that I'm sure."

Atem nodded, placated. "I'm just checking, Yugi. You know that I care about you."

"I know," Yugi said. He had a number of friends that felt the same way about him, too. It was a comforting thing to know that you were loved. His days of feeling alone and exiled were over.

"The room seems to be going well…" Atem said uncertainly, as his eyes swept back and forth over the pile that Yugi had pulled from beneath their bed.

Yugi held his head, exhausted. "I'm making progress, I think. This is the last thing I have to do," he said, indicated the heap of junk.

"Do I have to force you to throw some things away?" Atem asked, winking. "Are you going to try to keep everything you've ever owned?"

"Uh… yes," Yugi joked, and then hit Atem in the face with a pillow. Atem quickly retaliated until it evolved into a full-scale pillow brawl. A few minutes later, they stopped, panting.

"Don't think that this is going to get you off," Atem said, picking himself off the floor. "Pillow fight or not, you still have work to do."

Yugi frowned. "Are you going to help me?" he asked.

"By help, do you mean that I do it for you?" Atem laughed. "This is something that you need to do for yourself. And I'm sorry that I have to leave you here to it, but there's not much more work to be done."

"I didn't have to do this sort of thing in Poranis," Yugi muttered as Atem turned to leave the room.

Atem stopped and looked at Yugi. "Poranis?" he asked. "Your childhood home?" Yugi never talked much about his past. As far as Atem had inferred, Yugi's parents had died when he was eight years old, and he had traveled to Grandpa's house to live with him. Grandpa, who had grown apart from his son, Ichigo, didn't even know that Yugi existed. Upon arrival, Yugi was sub-fluent in English and seemed uncomfortable around many people. Atem never knew where Yugi grew up, what language he spoke natively, or why he had once possessed an aversion to crowds.

Yugi quickly looked away. "Yeah," he said quietly, and returned to cleaning up his room.

"What was it like there?" Atem asked, sitting down on the bed.

"Cold," Yugi replied shortly, not looking up.

"… Is that all?"

"Basically."

Atem saw that Yugi still wasn't comfortable talking about his history and decided to leave Yugi to his work. "If you want to talk about it," he said, "I'm all ears."

"Thanks," Yugi said noncommittally. But he would never tell him. Not if he could ever help it.