Author's notes: I've always wanted to do some sort of Ryou angst... because he is an awfully overlooked character in canon Yu-Gi-Oh, isn't he? They focus more on his yami while my dear Ryou suffers in the background.

Important: Ryou's mother is alive in my stories. My friend owns a copy of the original Japanese character guide, and she translated the section about Bakura for me. It mentioned that his sister died in a car accident, but it didn't say anything about his mother. If Takahashi-sensei has saidthat Ryou's mother is dead, then I'll accept that I'm wrong, but my stories will still include her. This is fanfiction, after all.

Please review! I'll get Ryou to give you puppy dog eyes until you do. Constructive criticism is greatly appreciated.

Shattered

When I was little, I didn't believe in superstitions. I remember that there used to be a mirror in the foyer of my grandmother's house – an antique "looking-glass" with an ornate, tarnished frame that she said came from the palace of the French king himself. How it ended up half a world away, in Japan, I'll never know. Not even an expert can tell now because the mirror has been shattered. But Grandma loved that mirror. When we cleaned out her attic after she died, my uncle found the pieces of glass and frame lovingly nestled in a cardboard box, enveloped in bubble wrap. Looking back on it, I wish someone had wrapped me in a protective layer and put me to sleep in the dust under the rafters until it was safe to be found again.

Grandma was full of old wives' tales that my sister and I, being children of the digital age, didn't believe for an instant. She told us that she had put the mirror in the foyer because she could see if her guests cast reflections before she let them in. If they didn't, they were most likely vampires, creatures that could suck the life out of anybody. Amane and I just rolled our eyes. We knew enough about folklore to realize that vampires wouldn't come to your door while the sun was still up, and Grandma never answered the door after dark. Some of my aunts and uncles were concerned that Grandma was planting ideas like that in our young minds; they thought she should be put in a home, but we knew that she was only teasing. She tried to tell every tale with a straight face, but there was always a twinkle in her eye that gave it away. The only story she sincerely seemed to believe was that if you broke a mirror, you would have bad luck for seven years. She even wrapped her hand mirror in gauze before putting it away.

My relatives threw a large party for my sister's fifth birthday because they were also celebrating my father's return from his latest archaeological dig. Everything he had found belonged to the Egyptian Council of Antiquities, but he had managed to procure small gifts for the family from the Cairo marketplace. My present was a golden dream catcher with an eye carved in the triangular center; no one knew what it was for, but there was a loop on one side that my father put a string through so I could wear it as a necklace. The pendant seemed almost too heavy, but I didn't want to take it off. As gaudy as it was, the fact that it had come all the way from Egypt made it intriguing.

When I hung the ring around my neck, the world – I'm not sure how to say it – changed. Small details that had flown over my innocent head were now obvious, like how false my aunt's smile seemed when the other women bragged about their children, or how stiffly my uncle spoke to Grandma. My sister, blissfully unaware, thought that everyone was sincerely interested in the presents she was unwrapping, but I could see that many of my relatives were only watching to be polite. One of my older cousins was already calculating how much money my sister's gifts cost compared to the presents he had received on his birthday.

Though I was too young to express it or know what it meant, I felt disgusted. I slipped out of the room when no one was watching, growing increasingly frustrated. I needed to air my thoughts and my temper and try to calm both.

I only made it as far as the foyer. My grandmother's antique mirror playfully reflected the light from the party room onto my face, giving me an eyeful. The spots swimming in front of my vision faded reluctantly, leaving me rubbing my watery eyes; I threw a glare in the mirror's direction, as if it had intentionally half-blinded me. But the glare was short-lived because my eyes widened when I saw what the mirror was reflecting.

Or rather, not reflecting. Like a vampire, I cast no reflection.

My entire body went cold, as if the mirror had sucked up my body heat the way vampires suck blood. I backed away from the offending glass, mind protesting weakly, scrambling for some logical explanation. That was always my first reaction in a crisis despite the myths my father recited and the fables my grandmother spun. Like I said, I didn't believe in superstitions. I never thought I would stumble across something that frankly made no sense.

The heel of my foot struck the floor lamp. Jumping aside, I watched in horror as the fixture wobbled back and forth before finally overbalancing and toppling into the mirror.

Shattering glass and my scream brought all of the party guests running. I'll never forget the look on Grandma's face or the way she clutched at her heart when she saw the remains of her precious mirror. Or at least I thought she was looking at the mirror; I had an absurd notion that because I hadn't cast a reflection, no one could see me – they were all looking right through me at the shards of glass scattered across the rug. It wasn't until many years later that I realized that Grandma's look of horror was directed at me.

"Stay back!" my uncle hollered to some of the kids. "Watch out for the broken glass!"

One of my aunts herded the crowd of cousins back to the party room, and another aunt rushed to the kitchen for a dustpan.

"What's going on?" my father demanded.

"Honey, are you all right?" my mother asked.

"Seven years, child," Grandma muttered. All of the remaining relatives turned to look at her. "You break a mirror, you get seven years of bad luck." She shook her head, gazing at me with a mixture of sorrow and helplessness. "Be careful, child."

"Don't scare him, mother," my father sighed. "He's shaken up as it is. Besides, we all know it was an accident."

As if that could change the fact that the mirror was broken. Or the fact that Grandma was genuinely afraid.

As strange as the mirror incident was, I had managed to push it to the back of my mind about a month later, when I invited some friends over to play a new board game. In the previous several weeks, I had actually had a string of good luck: my grades had been excellent, I had scored several goals in gym, and I – me, the shy one – had actually met a new friend at the park. That new friend was one of the four people who showed up at my door, all of them rushing in, just barely remembering to remove their shoes and greet my mother in their haste to see this fantastic game. I don't remember which game it was, which is odd because I recall every other detail about that day with horrifying clarity.

I wore the Egyptian pendant because it was the first time my friends would be able to see it – I wasn't in the habit of wearing it to school every day – and because its unusual perceptive powers would come in handy. Back in those days, I was a bit of a sore loser.

Thanks in part to the ring's help, I quickly racked up an impressive score, leading the other boys by at least twenty points. My new friend was struggling, and he resorted to a gamble that would either double his score or knock him out of the game. I had to roll the dice to decide his fate.

As I cupped the dice in my hands and started to shake them, a strange sensation spread outward from the center of my chest; my limbs slowly went numb, and they moved without any order from me. I felt… detached. The world no longer included me; I was merely a spectator, viewing the board game and my friends through someone else's eyes, just like watching T.V. If I had looked in a mirror, I don't think I would have cast a reflection. I had become insubstantial, going from heightened perception to almost no perception at all.

My strange, nonexistent self blinked, and my new friend collapsed over the game board. The dice lay next to him, even though I didn't recall throwing them. He had lost.

At first I thought he had fainted from the shock of losing, but that was ridiculous – it wasn't like we were betting or anything like that. It was just a game. My other friends looked nervously at him and then at me, their faces mirroring my confusion. None of us moved. My friend remained slumped over, eyes staring vacantly, mouth rounded in an expression of surprise. I tried to run to my mother for help, but I couldn't even stand. Growing more and more desperate, I tried to scream, praying that someone would hear me, but no sound left my lips. Instead, my body calmly leaned over, picked up the dice, and motioned for my friends to keep playing.

The next few minutes were a scene from a nightmare. I watched, trapped in a disobedient body, as my friends fell victim one by one to whatever curse had claimed the first boy. I don't think I stopped screaming for nearly ten minutes, even after my voice returned and brought my mother running into the room and then out of it again to call the ambulance. My sister and I were bundled in coats, tossed in the back seat of the car, and subjected to the further terror of my mother's white-knuckled driving until we reached the hospital and left the car idling while we rushed into the emergency room, only to be told that we had to wait. My friends were being examined, and we couldn't be let in to see them. I didn't want to wait. I was afraid that if I had to stay still, whatever had taken over my body would come back and strike down somebody else. I also didn't want to watch my friends' family members arrive, didn't want to have to explain what had happened. But I had to do both.

The mother of the boy I had met at the park gave me a tiny, quivering smile. She placed a gentle hand on my shoulder and whispered, "Don't worry, sweetie. It isn't your fault. Don't ever think that it was your fault."

I opened my mouth, but I was a coward. I was afraid that she would hate me if she knew how wrong she was.

My friends had been comatose for nearly four months before I worked up the courage to ask another friend over to my house to play. This time the detachment was almost immediate, and so complete that I blacked out. When I came to, I realized that I had won the game but lost another friend.

After that, the mirror's bad luck dogged every step I took. The few friends I had fell like dominoes. Rumors spread faster than the plague, and soon the other kids wouldn't even look me in the eye. They avoided me during recess and lunch hour and refused to work with me on group projects. I bumped into one girl on my way to the bus after school and, stammering an apology, stooped to pick up the books she had dropped; when I looked up, I realized that she had run away. When I was ten, my parents pulled me out of the public school and sent me to a private academy on the other side of town, but my grades weren't good enough, and I barely lasted a year. I enrolled in a different school but was quickly expelled for what my counselor termed "behavioral issues." By that point, I was almost mute. Even if I knew the answer in class, I never raised my hand. I refused to give oral reports or join any clubs – anything to avoid drawing attention to myself. And every single friend that I made, no matter how careful I was or how many excuses I invented to keep them from hanging out with me after school, became a victim of my curse. I stopped counting at twenty bodies lying comatose in the hospital, but I'm sure there were more.

And then my sister, the one person who never treated me like an infectious disease, died. Car accident. She was nine. There are no words for what I suffered in the weeks following her death. So I won't even attempt to describe it.

I used to not believe in superstitions. But now I am sixteen, and it is eight years to the day since I broke that accursed mirror. Eight years. And my curse has not been lifted. Just yesterday I tried, once again, to start over at a new school, and, once again, someone fell victim to me. This time it was someone I barely knew. Apparently the demon inside me has grown bloodthirsty and is no longer content to wait for me to make friends.

Maybe I haven't become a vampire, but I sure as hell come close.

My mother helped me move into my new apartment two days ago. She hung a mirror in the hallway right outside my bedroom. According to her, it will reflect the light and make the narrow space seem brighter and wider – if it can find any light to reflect in the cloud of darkness that has settled over my shoulders. I stop in front of the glass on my way to the kitchen.

I haven't looked in a mirror since I broke Grandma's. I'm still far too pale, and my hair, in a country full of glossy, raven tresses, is stubbornly white. But my eyes are dark, reflecting the blackness of the void I fall into whenever the curse I carry claims my body and my consciousness. Grandma's voice swirls faintly around my head.

"…Vampires are always very pale because they never see the sun… They suck the life out of everyone… They have to, to survive."

I grab the hammer Mom used to hang the mirror and smash it into the glass. The shards sparkle as they fall, reflecting the metallic glitter of the Egyptian pendant around my neck. One sliver cuts my hand, slicing a trail of crimson through my pale skin. The pain, in a sick way, makes me happy. At least I can still feel something.

I lick the blood from the wound as my soul lies in pieces around me.

-End-