» the maudlin smile
by Inuki Ookami

Published: Feb » 23 » 05
Pairings: Seto x Jou
Archive? Ask me first. o.O;;
Disclaimer: sarcasm Yes. I own Yu-Gi-Oh. I also own other such fine works as Santa Claus, the Bible, all of Russia and North Vietnam, and twelve pairs of shoes made out of tea cups. /sarcasm

selection 1: inexplicable imbroglio

« Author's Note »

Glad to be back and writing something. Who knows if this one will go anywhere, I'm just messing around with styles- trying to do something fresh. As always, constructive feedback helps a lot, so I welcome it, but I won't force you to comment or anything weird. Don't be shy to tell me that this is rubbish, and exactly why it is- I won't be offended so long as you can support your claims- I'm always looking for constructive criticism. I haven't seen Yu-Gi-Oh for a while, so I might start to lose interest in this fandom, who knows... Per usual, this story is probably set after Duelist Kingdom, but before Battle City, but we'll see how I feel. I'll try to stick with the name 'Jou' and 'Jounouchi', and not use 'Joey' at all in this.

There is something to charcoal. Maybe it is that it is so black, rough, and repugnant. It is raw, and sends fragments of shrapnel flying across the page like dark embers of fury. Like a thousand chunks of magnetic fluid, smoothing across the pages of memory. Charcoal is the night and all of the wonders and evils it encompasses. The walls, black as charcoal. No, it wasn't so much the walls that were black as it was the cross-hatched figure. The wall was a single line- a corner in the darkness. The silhouette of a crouched figure sat, huddled up against the corner, its legs inexorably thrust beneath it, in a hauntingly hopeless death ballad. Who knew two simple strokes of charcoal, of black matter, could resemble such hopelessness?

Like a cinematic feature, the horrific scene unfolded right before my very eyes. The scene that no one was supposed to see or ever know. The door loomed in the simple, but eerie moonlight. Like some kind of freakish Cartesian perspective-related, warped fun house mirror, the door twisted menacingly over the figure. The night air was fresh and cool, and the window, which rested on the opposite wall of the door, was open; the window caused the drapery to gently billow as though it were some great sail. The parched, silvery light filtered through, into the stagnant room. Toward the darkened charcoal-black corner, the breathy night air was gone, replaced only with the intense feeling of oppression and claustrophobia.

At first I was aware of no other sound than the gentle wind brushing its tail against the cloth that lined the window, but soon enough I could hear it joined by another, more melancholy sound. At first I thought that perhaps it was only another sound formed by some kind of atmospheric behaviour, possibly the gusts of air blowing past some external object that I could hear in the distance, but as the corner hovered closer, I realized that it was in fact the figure which was creating the peculiar noises. They sounded muffled, like a man being gagged, and as I lent my ear more greatly to the figure, it turned into an audible sob. And then the figure was shaking, shaking uncontrollably, and rocking back and forth. Because the figure's head was still securely tucked behind it's knees, I could not make out the face at all, it was all lost in a scraggly mess of blonde hair.

"Jou! Come on, or you'll be even later than we already are for class! Sensei isn't going to be very happy!" a chirpy voice scolded.

Suddenly I was standing in the middle of a long hallway with sterile lights gleaming down upon me, and rays of sunlight flashing diagonally down across the path from the nearby window. I was standing with my nose nearly pressed right up against a picture on the wall. I was standing right outside of an art classroom, and they had posted some of the student's work up in the hallway. The particular picture was drawn in, well, I assume it was charcoal. Then again, knowing very little of art in general, I couldn't be certain. But what memory or imagined event had the piece of art triggered in me so violently? It was so visceral and vivid that I had thought it to be real. Somehow, somehow it had transported me from where I stood in the hallway to a moment that I knew had impacted me, but the second I was back in the hallway, I couldn't remember what it was I had seen... I could only remember the profound emotional impact it had on me.

"Jou? Jou, are you listening? Come on!" Anzu nagged, walking over to me, and tugging me by the baby-blue sleeve of my shirt. I turned to her quite suddenly, no longer lost in thought.

"Yeah, 'course. I don't know what got inta me!" I said, a little confused, and laughed gently, scratching the back of my head, as though it would provide her with some kind of answer.

"Well then, let's go to class! We're already five minutes late!" She said, dragged me off by the shirt sleeve, toward the class.

And so it began.