One would think it would sound like a crash. Maybe glass breaking. It didn't sound like that. Yugi knew. The Pharaoh left into the afterlife, and Yugi had heard the sound the minute he left. He wanted to touch lips with him, to prove how much he loved him. He wanted to beg him not to leave, to stay with him forever. He didn't, and he heard the sound.

It was said before, it didn't sound like a crash or breaking glass. It sounded like a heartbeat, but suddenly intermitted, and replaced with the sound of silence. When one is on the verge of heartbreak, their heart starts racing, if they know what's happening. When it does happen, they can't hear their heartbeat anymore, it's like their heart stopped. If they checked for a pulse, it was still there, it was the noise of it that was absent.

For days, it was that. Yugi would sleep, and before he slept, he could hear his heartbeat, pulsing steadily, calm. It would be like that after he woke up, for a few minutes. After around five or ten minutes, he couldn't hear his pulse anymore, but he felt it if he searched for it. Everyday, he prayed for it to stop. He prayed for the spirit of the Pharaoh to return to the Millennium Puzzle, and be with him. His heart would no longer be broken, it would be one large piece again, and the sudden heartbeat to silence would turn into heartbeat, forever.

But his prayers were never answered. The Pharaoh never came back. Of course, he sometimes visited Yugi, in his dreams. Yugi would be somewhere, whether it be standing in his bedroom, or laying on his bed. Sometimes he was standing around inside the Domino Museum, or wandering the deserts of Egypt. no matter where he was, every night, Yugi would talk to the Pharaoh, whom he addressed as "Yami".

The first night, he was on the bottom floor of the game shop, just sitting at one of the game tables. As he was using a deck of Solitaire cards to build a card tower, he heard a voice. "I've never seen you build a card tower before."

It scared him so much, as he was placing a card on the top, he dropped it, and the whole thing fell down. He looked around for the source of the voice, and eventually saw the Pharaoh in front of him. "What are you doing here? I thought you were in the afterlife."

"I am. I'm visiting you in your dream, Yugi."

"Maybe it would be easier if you left, and didn't come back. I'm..."

"Experiencing a heartbreak. I know."

"How did you know that?"

"i figure out a lot of things in my good time, Aibou."

"You haven't called me that..."

"Since I last saw you. I know."

"Stop finishing my sentences."

"Okay. It's just about morning, anyway. I'll see you tomorrow night, Aibou."

And Yugi had woken up. As he sat up to breathe, and contemplate what he had just seen and experienced, he heard his heartbeat, and it was suddenly muted. The sound kept replaying over in his head, the echoing thud of his heartbeat, and then seconds of silence. The shattering of his broken heart. He didn't want to listen to it anymore, but he did, every day. So was the day in Yugi's life after the Pharaoh's departure.

He asked himself every day, was it a curse? Was it a curse to have the Pharaoh to visit him every night? He didn't want it to continue any longer. Every night from the first, he had hoped the the Pharaoh wouldn't return. However, his hopes seemed to be dumb, childish wishes, as the Pharaoh came back, every night.

After the card tower at the game shop, it was the ice cream cone at the park. Then, the lyric sheets in New York. After that, the bucket of popcorn in the movie theater. The canteen in the Egyptian desert. The glass of warm milk in his bedroom. The bucket of dirty water at the Domino Museum. The coffee at the café (that one hurt). The last one Yugi remembered was the books on the bookshelf at the library.

After the last one, he wondered if anyone else had ever had a whole shelf full of books fall on top of them. Sure, it wasn't real, but all of these things actually hurt him in the dreams, and he woke up with the pain. When he had recieved scalds from the coffee in that one dream at the café, he woke up with the burns, and his grandfather had to put Vaseline on it and bandage them up. They were still, there, too, and it had been almost three weeks.

He woke up, and walked into the bathroom. He grabbed a hairbrush, but quickly put it back down, not forgetting "the incident" that had happened in eighth grade. He certainly didn't want to end up with another hairbrush stuck in his star-shape of a hairdo. Honestly, he wasn't sure if the surgeon had removed it or not. A chill went up his spine, he didn't want to think about it anymore.

He fell to the ground, breathing hard. This happened every time he stopped hearing his heartbeat, it felt like his heart had stopped going, until he felt his heart jump out of his chest. It was like it was trying to tell him, "I'm not dead, Yugi. I'm still here.", that it wasn't giving up on him while he was so young. His grandfather would've said the same thing, that he was closer to ending up under dirt than Yugi was.

Still, it terrified Yugi, to the point where he refused to go to sleep some nights. Those nights, sleep got the best of him, and he had short dreams, ones he didn't remember. All that he remembered was that the Pharaoh was there, because he always was. Sometimes, he talked about Duel Monsters, about the afterlife, about his and Yugi's friends.

Other times, he would talk about subjects that Yugi didn't want to listen to; about girls, dating, marriage, having children (was it just Yugi, or did he want to marry Mana?), love, and most of all, what life was like without one another. Yugi knew what it was like for him- pure torture, hearing the shattering of his broken heart every day- and he didn't want to hear what it was like for the Pharaoh.

It had been a long day, going to school, cooking dinner, dueling Joey (his best friend) and his grandfather. It was time for rest. He laid in the bed, closed his eyes, and fell right to sleep.

This time, he was laying on his bed, holding a mug of coffee. He decided to start sipping on it, when the voice came in. "It's nice to see you, Yugi."

He jumped, and the hot mug of coffee spilled all over his lap. He screamed in pain, and the Pharaoh threw a towel on top of him. "You'd think that you would get used to me by now."

"Well, I haven't. So, what do you want to talk about today?"

"Well, you've been asking me to stop coming into your dreams ever since I started. I was wondering if this should be the last time I do this."

"Yami."

The Pharaoh turned to look at him. He sat on the bed next to Yugi, who pulled him closer, and kissed him on the lips. He pulled back. The Pharaoh had a hand over his mouth, blushing. "Yami, I love you. Please, if you're going to do anything, come back."

"Yugi, this is the only way I can come back. I can't return to the Millennium Puzzle, like you want me to. I have to stay in the afterlife, but I can visit you in your dreams."

"There's at least one good thing about dreams," Yugi said, placing another kiss on the Pharaoh's cheek. "Anything can happen."

The bedroom vanished. Yugi and the Pharaoh were standing next to each other, at the altar, and Yugi leaned in for another kiss. As they did so, the spirits of the Egyptians from the afterlife stood up and cheered. Mana yelled from the stand, "You are now married!", and the guests roared. They lifted Yugi and the Pharaoh up into the air, and Yugi vanished.

He was awake. But, if he was awake, why did he still hear the voice? "Tomorrow," he said, "I'll return, with a son. We'll have a future together, even if it's only though dreams."

They kissed again, and they waved as the Pharaoh disappeared.

"So," Yugi said to himself, "I'm married to the love of my life, but I can only see him during my dreams. Oh, such is the day in my life, but I love it."

And, from that day on, Yugi never heard the shattering of his broken heart again. All he heard was his voice, the Pharaoh's, the voice of his actual, human son, Atem. Never again would his pulse intermit, then go silent, and never again would he feel lonely and unloved. Now, he had the Pharaoh, and that made up for everything he ever needed- and it always would.