A/N: Written for

GX bingo – the non-flash version, #107 – mystery (genre)
Diversity Writing Challenge, b48 – write about finding something

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Haunted Playroom

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His playroom was housing guests. He was sure of it.

His parents didn't believe him though. Even when he heard noises when his parents were right there. But that was okay. Parents were like that sometimes. It just meant he had to find out what was haunting his playroom by himself.

…by himself. That was a bit of a scary thought. But he could do it!

So first thing came first. He had to search the playroom. Maybe he'd get lucky and there'd be a mouse hiding in the lego box – but that would be kind of bad, too, because the apartment didn't allow pets and how would a mouse have gotten in in the first place? And his parents would probably get rid of it, because mice weren't common pets. Maybe it'd be a cat instead. But that wouldn't change the fact that pets weren't allowed in the apartment.

So he searched the playroom from top to bottom – and when his parents noticed, they helped him clean it up as well. He got rid of a few toys he didn't play with anymore, but didn't find any pets or even pests hiding out, or any evidence that they'd ever been there.

So no pets then.

Which led him to the next possibility. His playroom was haunted.

And what was he supposed to do about that?

He researched, of course. Looked up ghosts and finding them and got a few ghost-busting and ghost-chasing techniques. And a few, like the garlics from the kitchen, that were more appropriate for other sorts of creatures but he saw no reason not to cover his bases.

The garlic cloves made the room unbearable after a couple of days and they had to air it out and use air freshener to stop it from being permanent. And it didn't succeed in coaxing out the whatevers were hiding in his playroom either.

And then he started noticing the voices elsewhere. He didn't put two and two together for a long time, but his parents did when he'd mentioned it long enough. They stopped indulging his efforts to find the source of those noises and started herding him away instead. Insisted that he kept everything in order and never brought toys into his room to sleep (except the large Kuriboh plushie that staved off nightmares sometimes). They especially insisted he kept his deck there when he wasn't using it, even when he was starting to grow out of the assumption that decks and toys were of the same value, and was putting decks higher.

And it wasn't until Duel Academia, when Hane Kuriboh began to move in his card, then then materialise independent of it, and that game with the scary stories where he'd drawn a level one card, that it all clicked, that he realised the sounds, the indistinguishable whispers, were from his cards, his deck, all along.

And it took another two years to realise his parents had known that all along as well. Took those two years because he needed to remember Yubel first, and remember why his memories of that period of his life had been so carefully sealed away.

And it wouldn't have been a mystery at all if they hadn't been, because he'd known about the spirits back then…and Yubel.

And they would have had no reason to cry and whisper in the playroom alone, either.