Disclaimer: I do not own the characters, stories, and themes of YGO. This is a work of fiction, though the basic premise this story (i.e., characters investigating another character's disappearance) has already been written on.
I picked Miho and Mayumi almost at random: Miho because she's a sympathetic character and Mayumi because her personality is relatively unknown, which makes her a perfect narrator.
The title is an homage to a brilliant podcast series (aka not dorky little me who really, really likes puns). Cookies if you can name it, but I'm not affiliated with that organization or story in any way.
I just happen to be very enamored with the idea of telling a detective story bit by bit. Blame it on my love of everything Agatha Christie.
Dear Notes:
This journal has been ten years in the making.
I want to talk (er...write?) about the nature of truth today.
Specifically, the unknowable nature of truth.
How is it that we know what we know? What, if anything, can we be certain of from the things we claim to know? Is everything knowable to us or are certain things simply impossible to know, forever glittering in the distance like so many stars, visible to the eye but incomprehensible to the mind? Is what we know truly what we know or is it a memory- a fiction of sorts- conjured by our brains to remember the unknown as best as we can?
Heraclitus (a wise man) once posited that we cannot step in the same river twice. Each time we do so, we in fact change the nature of the river and the river itself changes us. We do not meet the same set of circumstances any more than the sun sets on the same earth each day.
Let's assume Heraclitus is right. Does this mean that what we believe to be true changes us and the nature of what is true?
If that is the case, then, how can we know with any certainty the veracity of our memories?
I have been mulling over that question for the past decade.
Why, you ask?
Almost ten years ago today, my friend Miho Nasaka disappeared on her way home after school. She has never been found. There are rumors that she flew voluntarily, like Anzu eventually did, to America, to pursue her dream of becoming a real Disney princess in California. (Apparently the Disney Corporation hires people to role-play characters. Isn't that strange?) There are rumors that she eloped with Yami Bakura- more on him later- but that's a tall tale best served cold with a hefty helping of skepticism. Darker rumors than that fly- an overzealous admirer, collateral for a business deal gone bad, or perhaps the age-old, cliche explanation of simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I've spent the last ten years trying to piece together what happened to Miho. I'm not a detective, but I am (I refuse to use "was" until we know for certain) Miho's friend. I owe it to her to keep searching until I find an answer.
Thankfully, I am not as silly as I used to be, so this journey should prove a dark and gritty one.
Miho was like the older sister I never had. Anzu, too, and I have both of them to credit for my current career in investigative journalism. Anzu for her never-ending supply of courage and Miho...for being herself and for inspiring me to search for the truth. (Sideonote- can you imagine I used to have a crush on Jounouchi, who didn't even know I existed? What could I have possibly been thinking? Oh right...I was fourteen and not very schooled in anything other than silly teenage feelings.)
In a way, I have been working on this story since then. A bit of my childhood vanished with Miho; I have been searching for that, too, but I have a feeling we would all have a better chance of finding Miho than the person I used to be. The people we all used to be, in fact, before the sun set on our naivete.
I have painstakingly gathering information from every single source in search of an answer. I thought it would be easy to add up what does and doesn't belong for a clear picture of what happened.
What I found instead is a collection of mirages. Sift through them with me. Perhaps we will find that elusive truth together.
What we know for certain is that Miho is gone and what we want to know is where and why. Anzu, Yuugi, Honda, Jonouchi, and Bakura have all agreed to share their recollections with me. Even Chuono-san spoke with me from behind an ornate hand-held fan. We will get to why in the pages that follow.
I suppose I should start with what I remember before recording what others recollect. Where better to start than with me?
I remember it was a normal day. Sun shining. Birds chirping. Clouds dancing.
Nothing about that morning or afternoon betrayed the horrors that followed.
We ate lunch together in the cafeteria. I remember because Anzu packed Yuugi's lunch that day (if memory serves, Grandpa Motou had been away on an expedition) and Yuugi turned an adorable shade of crimson when he found she had accidentally packed two pairs of chopsticks instead of one. Jou, oaf that he was, teased Yuugi about "sharing " more than rice with his caring wife. Yuugi nearly chewed through his tongue in embarrassment. Anzu laughed and placed the extra pair of chopsticks in her hair. She and Miho exchanged a look.
It shouldn't surprise you that I didn't really understand what was going on at that point. I was fourteen and Jou's additional comments about making a video didn't really make sense to me until much later. Evidently Anzu got it then, because Jou and Honda's laughter was abruptly smothered with a miso facial, which made Yuugi and Miho shoot water out of their noses.
Little did we all know that would be the last time life would be so simple.
What I remember now, then, is a very normal day. I have relived it over and over and it is still the same silly and happy day as the others. There was nothing special about that day that portended the disaster that followed. I was still the young hanger-on clinging to Anzu's every word. Jou and Honda were the slightly dirty-minded teenagers they were. Yuugi was his usual bashful self. Anzu was as caring and kind like always. And Miho was...Miho. Cracking jokes about silly things and whining about homework like the rest of us.
Which is why we were all blindsided when Miho disappeared on her usual walk home from school. She bid us all good-bye after Math (was it math? Ten years have blurred my memory, but that's not the point per se). Her long lavender hair swung in the breeze as she carried her orange lunchbox. She stood in front of the school gates. A cheery "See you guys tomorrow!" echoed when she turned.
But when tomorrow came, Miho was not at the gates with her usual ivory scarf and her special D-Shock watch.
At first we thought she simply got lost on her way home. She has done that before. You see, sometimes Miho gets distracted, which lands her in some interesting scenarios. Like the time she spent a night locked in the Domino's premier department store because she accidentally fell asleep on one of the showroom mattresses and the janitor thought she was part of the display. (For the record we talk to him, too, after it was established that she truly was missing, but if you ask me that's barking up the suspect. Let's leave that stone un-turned for now).
So we didn't worry about Miho the first day she missed school. We figured she "sick" and visiting a new fashion boutique that just opened. Or perhaps she accidentally walked in the wrong direction and was now at a police station waiting for her parents to pick her up. (And yes, she's done that before, too). They were on an overseas on a trip and would get her when they landed. Or something like that. Really, all we imagined were some pretty quasi-reasonable situations that only teenagers would dream up.
We started to worry in earnest the second day. It wasn't like Miho to be "sick" two days in a row, no matter how gorgeous the pastry-shaped gowns at the new boutique looked. Her parents returned and she wasn't waiting for them at home. No messages. Not with the police or any of us as far as we knew, but it was later discovered that she jammed a small, handwritten note in the back of my locker, allegedly right before she walked home.
Mr. and Mrs. Nosaka called the police.
Radio silence the next few days.
And then...a flurry of activity after the volunteer search team found an orange lunchbox fifteen blocks from Miho's home.
The finding is not strange in and of itself. Orange lunchboxes were all the rage in the early 2000s and it's reasonable to expect some of them are lost or go missing. That's what we thought, too, until we saw the only one of those lunchboxes was engraved with a small star with five sides. A name on each corner. Me, Anzu, Yuugi, Jou, and Honda. Miho's name was written in the center of the star in her favorite purple gel pen.
The location was strange, though. Of course, there's a reasonable explanation for finding Miho's orange lunchbox anywhere. It's possible that someone had stolen it and dumped it at a site that ended up coincidentally close to the residence of one of the key persons of interest in her disappearance (if you're wondering, it's Bakura and we'll hear from him).
The more likely scenario is that Bakura is somehow involved and, given his penchant for memory loss at the time, perhaps he knew more than he let on. Then again, as far-fetched as it is, we can't discount the strange vagaries of randomness, either. So really, the discovery of the lunchbox opened a pantry stocked with cans of worms.
What we do know for certain is that Miho's pink leather wallet- which we all know never left her person- was in her lunchbox. If motive was simple robbery, then the thieves were sure as hell not after the money or debit cards. Her school identification card was also left behind.
Which raises the rather insidious question of whether they (or perhaps he or she, just one person) were after if money and identity were not the motives. Miho herself? One of her parents' disgruntled employees? Was it possible that this was just a case of mistaken identity? Is Miho the unlucky recipient of a prize no one wanted from fate?
I've mulled over these questions countless times. Miho's case is most puzzling, even for an experienced investigative journalist like me. The case is fascinating not just because I know and admired her, but because there is a preponderance of evidence both for and against all of the suspects, whom we will examine and cross-examine in due time. Hence the murky search for answers.
We've touched upon Bakura already, but there is also the capsule monsters collector, the perverted psychic who tried to drug Anzu, even Mr. and Mrs. Nosaka. We'll talk to students in our grade in due time- Kaiba, for one, and that freaky kid who used to beat others for fun. We'll talk to Honda, too, though I refuse to believe he is a viable suspect until the evidence says otherwise.
All in all, Miho's case is one of too many suspects and not enough evidence. Or not definitive enough evidence.
The truth is an elusive thing.
After examining what we know and don't know, I-for one- still believe.
Miho, wherever you are, we're still searching for you. This is what we have so far and we are working to find the rest.
Thoughts? Is this worth continuing?
Please PM if you would like to beta/trade ideas/kick my butt into gear when I get lazy. Must love Agatha Christie.