I will upload two chapters of this story at the same time - still, if you have time, please leave me a review for each separately. Thanks!

Have you ever experienced what war can do to people? No? Well, I have. War has destroyed my family. There was a time when I didn't even know how my mother looked like – because I never met her. My father is still alive, I grew up with him. But although he returned from the fight physically whole and untarnished, although I am used to almost every kind of war-handicap that you can possibly imagine, I've always thought he is the most terribly wounded man I met in my life. Its like – well, like he misses a part of his soul.

Yugi told me he's always been a bit like this, at least as long as they know each other. Cold and distant. It's not like he doesn't love me, but he walks through life like a living dead, hardly caring what happens around him. I'm serious. He certainly doesn't suffer of a lack of food, with a fortune like his on his beck and call, yet he seems deprived, starving, craving for something he can never have. Like I said: Like a piece of his soul was missing.

Perhaps I should say a few words about Yugi. He's my godfather - that must have been the decision of my mother, dad isn't exceptionally fond of him, to put it mildly. I don't even know my mothers name, all I know is that she used to be friends with Yugi. When I was a little girl, I sneaked into my fathers bedroom once, and had a look at the photograph he keeps so carefully locked away in his bedside table, almost as if he fears that his – and her – past might catch up with him. As I told you – I was a little girl. I really thought she had been a princess; at least she looked like I thought a princess would look like. When I grew up, I realised that she must have been dressed up for a masquerade, or maybe a play. Was she an actress? I never knew. But I know for sure that she must have been a simply extraordinary woman, if my father still thinks about her that much, even if he could have almost any single woman in Domino, and some of the married ones, too.

Now that I think about it – it could have been a photo of her in her wedding dress. Sounds strange – but I don't even know whether my parents were married!

I think Yugi likes to talk about her – it makes him smile. So he talks, and I listen. But all he ever mentions is their time at school, he never tells me her name or her birthday or whether she was married to my father.

Perhaps having a look at the room that used to be hers would answer some of my questions. But getting in there would be as easy as to keep me from thinking about her – nearly impossible. The door is always locked, except for the few hours every night dad spends in there. He never tells me where he is going, or tells me he has to work, but I know he's not in his office. One time I managed to peek in when he was there – it didn't seem to be the room of a dead – or at least an absent – person. It looked like she just left to answer the phone and would be back in a few minutes. Even the last book she must have been reading is still there, the page carefully marked. No matter what they tell us at school – dad's heart is not beating behind his ribs, pumping blood to sustain his body. He locked it in this room – perhaps forever.

Sometimes I wonder if he cries while he is in there. I think it's possible - although it sounds more than strange: Seto Kaiba, the great CEO of Kaiba Corporation, crying. But he cried when they took him away, at least that's what Yugi told me.

"If we had still had tabloids that day, they would have had a field day." He told me. "It was at your baptism. Your father and I were the only men, all our other friends had already been taken away to war. I had a broken leg and your father – he simply refused to go. All his money didn't save him at the end – they came when we were just about to sit down for dinner, and took him with them."

Every time Yugi tells me about my parents, I am able to picture everything. Especially that time… sometimes I still dream about the soldiers, ripping our family apart.

"I never saw your father cry before – and I never did so later. Just this once. He was holding you in his arms, your mother was clinging to his shoulder, but that didn't help them. First they forced her away, then they took you out of his arms. He didn't have to stay very long… just a few months, then he was allowed to return home, because the end of the war was already in sight. Your mother was gone by then, none of us ever knew what happened to her. Perhaps she was killed by a bomb, perhaps shot, perhaps she isn't dead at all and just got lost in the chaos we had back then – who knows? But I can't really imagine that… she would have went all the way to hell and back again just to be with the two of you. I think your parents knew the very day that your father had to leave that they wouldn't see each other again."

--

Once I asked Yugi how my parents met each other. He thought for a while, then he answered:

"It must have been about two years before your birth. Of course, they knew each other for years, we were in the same class and we had spent a lot of time together, though that was certainly never your father's intention – I can´t tell when exactly your mother noticed that he was not the cold man he always pretended to be, she could sense feelings were they didn´t seem to exist. But I think they fell in love on this certain day in November… was it the fifth? Or maybe the fifteenth, it doesn´t matter.

He attempted to kill himself, you know. We never knew why, he didn't seem the kind of person that would commit suicide, and none of us had expected something like this to happen.

Your mother figured out what he was up to – don't ask me how – and went after him. As you can see – she was successful. That must have been when they fell in love, I guess... No talk of suicide after that day. Of course, there never was more between them than talking and holding hands, maybe a short kiss, as long as others were present. Seto´s not the man to show his love to everyone – but you could see that they both were never happier than when they were together. In some way you could have thought that they were just one person instead of two."

It was then that I first heard the story of the creature that was both male an female: The ancient Greeks believed that at the beginning of time all humans had four arms, four legs and two heads. They where not man nor woman, they were both. These creatures were so powerful that they would have been able to defeat the gods.

That's why the gods, frightened for their own superiority, tore each of them into two pieces: a man and a woman.

Ever since that time, humans go through their lifes, looking for their second half.

Yugi has always been fascinated by myths and legends, but he used to love this one particularly. He used to smile when he talked about it, but I could see that he meant it when he told me that this story was definite proof that there is some truth in every tale. You could see that my parents were two parts of one being, he used to say.

I guess I will have to take his word for this – at least, it would be an explanation of the miserable state my father has been in ever since I know him. Who would be able to loose a part of himself without being marked for life?

--

I can't tell why I am thinking of this now. Maybe it is because of the woman I saw at the school gate today – she looked familiar, but not until several hours later did I realize who she reminded me of.

Of course, that is impossible.

The bell rang just a second ago, and I am trying to see who is standing outside, but it is raining so hard that I can't make out the figure waiting outside the wrought iron gates of our mansion.

It's a woman, I think, her clothes are wet and clinging to her body, so it is quite easy to make out her form. Yes, definitely a woman.

Dad just came down and peered out of the window as well – and I always thought it was a figure of speech to say that all color drains from someone's face!

It's still raining hard, everything is grey and blurred outside, and now the gates open and she is approaching the house.

I think I can see her eyes now.
They look familiar.

More than that, they're the eyes I see every morning when I look into the bathroom mirror.

Is it possible?

Dad is now opening the door.

The rain is padding on the roof and making it hard to understand, it was only a whisper anyway, but I just might have learned my mothers name right now.

"Tea."