Happy holidays! Man, did this year ever go by fast … Sorry for the late posting. I really was out all day with my family for Christmas Eve. Thanks so much to the many reviewers for my last story!
Disclaimer: The ideas of the afterlife described in this story do not necessarily reflect my own beliefs. I base my description on hints from the manga and anime and research into Egyptian and Japanese religion. I do not claim to be right or wrong, in the ideas from my writing or my own thoughts. Also, I do not own YuGiOh. But I don't think I really need to confirm that: if I was Takahashi Kazuki-san, why would I write dozens of free fanfiction when I could make one manga volume and sell a million copies in a month (and get paid)? Yeah.
I should also go ahead and say that I mean no offense to any religious (or non-religious) belief systems with this story. Fact: the vast majority of Japanese people celebrate Christmas as a commercial holiday, if at all. It's not an official day off work or school, nor is the traditional meaning much of a deal in the country. The majority of Japanese religion is Shinto or Buddhism. Again, this is simple fact. The meaning of Christmas explored in this story is connection and love … no, not romantic. To me, maybe that's a meaning all of us, regardless of religious beliefs, can understand. The idea of peace, family, friendship, and caring, and connection despite the distance between us."Happy Christmas" is also a more standard way of saying the more American "Merry Christmas."
Title translates to "Stars in the Dark Sky." Maybe that has some meaning for this, too. Reviews would be an absolutely perfect Christmas present. Maybe? :)
As a final warning: certain themes introduced in this story hint at a lengthy fic I plan to post next year. No, this is not intentionally trying to advertise on my part. But my oneshots exist in the same world as this story, and certain themes here may directly relate to themes discussed in that particular story. Plus, the story is question isn't entirely … self-contained. There are things in there that relate to themes discussed in most of my fics. That's all I'm going to say (okay, yes, I'm kind of teasing you).
Whether or not you celebrate it, I wish all of you a very Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah, to any Jewish readers, or happy Kwanzaa, or happy Winter Solstice. Or just happy winter. Thanks for all your kind encouragement as I've settled into this new fandom over the past six(-ish) months. I never imagined I'd come to love writing for this anime so much.
I hope you all enjoy this little (or not so little) holiday piece. Please let me know what you think! And just so you know: yes, even at the end, there is one question that you are meant to answer (or not answer) for yourself. ... though I can't say I don't have an idea for how to answer it myself.
Kurai Sora no Hoshi
Jii-chan insisted on getting a turkey.
It was a particularly odd concept to Yuugi, considering that Jii-chan was supposed to be the old-fashioned one around here, and back in his day, no one made anything special out of this time of the year except for the dropping temperatures and excess snow. It was also odd considering that Jii-chan didn't even like turkey. Yuugi, especially, hated the stuff. The only one who ever ate it was his mother, and she ended up putting it on every sandwich she made after the holiday for weeks on end.
He wouldn't have minded the tradition all that much, except someone had decided along the way that it should be his job to go out and buy the turkey.
So for the fourth year in a row, he found himself marching through the biting cold wind wrapped in far too many coats—and only for his mother's peace of mind, not because he actually needed even half of them—after school on a Wednesday afternoon, toward a grocery store that may or may not have actually carried turkey.
According to what Anzu had once described, this was definitely not the original intention of the western holiday.
It was the first time in a while that he was really aware of the month. For a long time he had just kept track of days of the week. When it was the weekend, when he had a test in school, when he needed to help out in the shop for extra allowance. It had only hit him that morning when his mother had mentioned the dinner they always had, even if they barely knew the origins of the holiday and even if only one of the three of them liked the main course, that December was coming to an end.
It had taken all of his will power not to count how long it had been. That was one thing he wasn't going to let himself do.
He had counted for far too long already before he forced himself to stop.
He didn't let himself remember how long it had been since that either.
People chattered on his way to the grocery store. People passing by on the street, people greeting one another, people just going about their day. Yuugi listened to their voices, and he couldn't stop himself from imagining that they sounded different. Imagine they spoke different words, words in his head, words no one else could hear.
He might have laughed at the idea of missing how people once stared at him for talking to himself in public, and yet he couldn't quite bring himself to do it.
And yet he also couldn't hold back the smile when he put his hand on the glass front door of the grocery store and heard the faint remembrance of a voice in the back of his head asking why it was that talking to oneself in public was all that strange.
The employee inside smiled and gave a small bow when he walked in.
And it was very difficult for Yuugi not to laugh when he asked where they kept the turkeys and the employee nearly stumbled back into the shelves.
The very concept of dates was a difficult one in this new world, and it wasn't something anyone seemed able to help him figure out.
They all said it was because after three thousand years of being here, you stopped caring what day it was in the living world and just focused on what was going on here. Atem had tried time and time again to explain to them that when they had all lived, dates hadn't played nearly as big a role as they did now, and that all the people they might want to check up on were already here.
The only one who understood what he meant was Mana, and when he tried to ask her with perhaps a bit too much enthusiasm if she could tell him the date, she just blinked twice, cocked her head, and shrugged.
And they said there was supposed to be no cause for stress in the afterlife.
"Yes, just this, please."
But he had stopped worrying about dates after he realized he could hear Aibou's voice.
He could hear many voices. Voices he knew, voices he didn't know, voices he thought he knew but wasn't sure. But mostly Aibou's. And once he could hear Aibou's, all the other questions of this world, all the other uncertainties, were gone for a very long time.
Though he still would have liked to know the date.
It hadn't been long after he arrived when he first heard Aibou's voice, one evening—or what looked like evening—sitting outside under the stars that were not really stars. First so faint he couldn't make out a word, then syllables, then words, then entire sentences and thoughts and feelings. Vaguer than he had felt them before, but there. Like a bell ringing out in his head, singing with a wonder and thrill he had once thought he might never know again.
It hadn't taken him long at all to forget Mana's promise that he would be able to watch over them all once he learned how.
But she had been as eager as ever to teach him how to look through the little pool of water near the palace courtyard and into the world he had once known. The pool always seemed to be there when he was looking for it, but never when he wasn't—though that much was still speculation, given that he always seemed to be looking for the pool.
Isis didn't like it. She thought it would only make it harder for him to adjust if he clung too hard to a world where he did not belong.
But Atem didn't care what Isis thought. He could hear Aibou. He could see Aibou.
And he was not going to give that up.
Atem leaned on the stone that surrounded the little pool, and squinted as a few ripples from his breath that was not breath blurred the image of the boy with the strange hair that matched his, pushing open the glass door with one hand with the paper bag in his other. He stumbled, but caught himself before the turkey spilled out.
Atem didn't know if he remembered turkey, and somehow it ached when he realized he couldn't ask Aibou whether he should remember it at all.
Aibou huffed so loud even Atem could hear it, and Atem leaned in as Aibou trudged through the crowds and the cold away from the store.
"Okay, let's see … we got the turkey, Mama's got all the other food … I wonder if anyone else is doing this for Christmas …"
He had grown.
Atem knew he was imagining it. He knew if he actually went down there and got out a measuring stick to check, Aibou likely wouldn't have grown more than a fraction of a centimeter. But he looked older from here, so much that it had been nearly impossible to believe when Atem realized it had only been a few months since they stood together in front of that Door.
The pool only showed him glimpses. Glimpses whenever he watched, glimpses whenever he dared to peer down into the world he had already left—glimpses of Aibou leaving the grocery store, slipping into another store, slipping out a minute later with something else Atem couldn't see tucked in a smaller plastic bag at his side. It never gave explanations or times or anything but an image and the faintest hints of sounds.
But he could see those changes in Aibou. He could see how he carried himself, how he walked with tiniest bit more strength than he had before. The same strength Atem had seen in him long ago, back when he had still looked to Atem for his own power, when all the while Atem had been looking to him for everything he needed to go on.
The boy who now held his own life. A life that would give him all he needed to be strong.
The familiar glass door opened and closed with the ringing of a little bell as Aibou disappeared into the shop, and Atem sighed as much as a spirit could sigh and rested his cheek in his palm.
It was the long time before the ringing of the bell ceased to echo through his skull.
As expected, the turkey was disgusting.
His mother smiled when she served up a portion far too large even for someone who liked turkey on his and Jii-chan's plates, and he and Jii-chan flashed each other looks across the table of sympathy and distaste. But Yuugi's mother just walked on to her own seat at their table, and kept that ridiculous grin that Yuugi found just a little bit sadistic.
Yuugi didn't mind Western-style dinners. Living in the game shop, he had grown quite accustomed to American tendencies, given that many of the games were imported. He still preferred bacon and eggs over rice for breakfast any day. But there were times when he wondered if his mother hadn't decided to spite Jii-chan for bringing in so many Western games by making them act on this one day a year as if they weren't Japanese.
He might have laughed the entire idea away, if it weren't for the fact that when he looked over at his mother's plate, he saw absolutely no turkey at all.
She looked up at him and smiled that ridiculously sweet grin.
"Yuugi, aren't you going to eat?"
Yuugi grimaced, but tried his very best not to let it show.
"Yes, Mama …"
She nodded and looked back to her plate, and Yuugi swirled his food with his fork until Jii-chan commented that the turkey wasn't going to hop on his fork and jump in his mouth by itself.
Granted, Jii-chan was right about that, but Yuugi still took the opportunity to point out to Jii-chan—in perfect hearing range of his mother—that he hadn't touched a bite of his turkey either.
If Yuugi was going to suffer through this again, he wasn't doing it alone.
Even if Jii-chan still had the lack of maturity necessary to pout when Yuugi's mother shoveled even more turkey on both their plates as soon as they managed to force it down.
But Yuugi ate it all, and all without choking or making himself sick. It was disgusting, and horrible, but somehow it was a little easier when he could laugh at the horrified and disgusted faces Jii-chan made at his plate. And eventually his mother grew tired of torturing them and gathered their dishes, the rest of the food left on the table for Yuugi and Jii-chan to put away for leftovers until the new year rang in.
Unfortunately for them, even with all the turkey they had stomached in the whole meal, most of the bird still remained for sandwiches and an odd lunch.
Maybe Yuugi could spend his savings eating out until the meat went bad.
He nearly dropped the plate of rolls as the familiar buzz of the doorbell echoed throughout the house, followed by a soft knock on the side door. He slipped a sheet of cling wrap over the rolls, slid them onto the kitchen counter and shuffled across the floor.
"I'll get it."
He walked down the hall, the wood strangely rough through his socks. He stepped down into the genkan, the doorknob colder than ice beneath his bare hands, and he wondered, for the first time, if his mother really did have a point whenever she insisted he put on warmer clothes before he even went to look outside.
He turned the knob and pulled open the door, and instantly, his quiet, tired eyes shot open wide.
At the familiar sight of a girl standing in front of the side door to his house, a thick blue coat zipped up to her throat and decorated with a pale pink scarf, hair falling messy to her shoulders and her eyes just like he had seen them so many times before.
Yuugi's jaw fell.
"Anzu?"
Anzu grinned that same grin Yuugi had seen so many times, her hands clasped in front of her and her head tilted to the side. Footsteps scrambled as two other heads poked out to either side of her, one with a spike of brown hair and the other with a mop of blonde locks, both wrapped in thick coats to fit the biting weather racing against them still. Both smiling, with a hand waving in the air.
Jounouchi-kun glanced at Honda-kun, raised his hand a little higher, and grinned wider still.
"Hiya, Yuugi!"
Yuugi jerked his head back and forth, his eyes just as wide as before.
"Jounouchi-kun? Honda-kun? What are you all …?"
The words trailed off his lips. Anzu grinned from ear to ear and shrugged.
"Well, none of us were really doing anything, so we—"
"Anzu called us and said if we didn't come with her she'd buy a dog and sic it on us," Honda-kun broke in with his thumb jabbed to his side.
Anzu's smile dropped, and she smacked her gloved hand against Honda-kun's arm. Honda-kun yelped.
"Ow! Okay, okay, kidding!" Honda-kun whined and rubbed his shoulder, then tried his best to smile. "Anzu just called us. We thought we'd come over."
Yuugi's mouth hung open still, so much that he couldn't help but wonder how it was that the inside of his mouth hadn't frozen from the cold wind. Anzu smiled again, Honda-kun shifted, and Jounouchi-kun rubbed his arms so hard he just about rubbed right through his jacket itself.
"So … can we come in? It's kinda cold out here."
The smile Yuugi had never let himself give broke out, stretching across his face as if it was the only thing that had ever belonged, and he yanked open the door and stepped back with an arm out in glee.
"Yeah! Come on, come on! Mama! Jii-chan! My friends are here!"
"I didn't know you invited guests!"
Yuugi just laughed, and it felt the most wonderful laugh that had echoed in his ears in a very long time.
"What are you doing?"
Atem jolted and just about fell into the pool, and even though he knew that such a thing was not really possible in the pool that was not a pool, he couldn't help but imagine himself splashing into the water and the entire royal court laughing at its young king soaked through his jewelry and clothes.
He spun around, and his wide and blinking eyes met a widely grinning face.
Atem breathed out heavy and long.
"Mana!"
Mana's grin grew.
"Yep, me! Hiya, Prince!"
Mana bounded the rest of the short distance between she and the little pool of water to stand beside Atem, hands behind her back and head high in the air. Atem looked at her with soft eyes he could imagine even if he couldn't see. He smiled for a split second before letting that smile fall.
"I've told you before, Mana, you can just call me Atem," Atem muttered, quieter than he had meant.
Mana blinked, and her smile twisted and vanished as her bottom lip stuck out in that signature pout he had seen more times than he could count, in this world and in the one before.
"But I couldn't call you that, Prince, I never call you that! Plus it's against the rules!"
Atem wanted very much to smile at her, but he couldn't quite bring himself to do it.
"Mana, we don't have those rules here."
Mana pouted more and quirked her head. "But you're still the pharaoh!"
Atem smiled, just for a moment, and couldn't make that smile stay no matter how he tried.
"So is my father, in a way," he countered with a shrug. "And so is Set."
Mana stared, as if he had taken to speaking a foreign language of which she only knew a few words.
"But not like you!"
Atem smiled a little more, his lips stretching so they almost brushed his ears. He held back the chuckle in his throat, and shook his head. He looked back to the water. His finger reached out as if to touch its surface, then pulled back and hung at his side. He breathed out and watched his breath draw ripples on the water almost too small to see.
He shrugged again when Mana's eyes did not leave his face.
"I'm just … watching."
"Watching?" Mana stepped forward once again, and broke out into another grin as her green eyes reflected the figures in the glow of the water. "Oh, you're watching him again!"
Atem straightened himself and felt the heavy gold of his earrings swing back and forth. He pressed his lips together and followed the echoing laughter and life in the tiny ripples of the pool.
"All of them."
"Your friends from the living world!" Mana confirmed, and leaned in so close she might have knocked Atem in had she stood just a little bit closer. She beamed. "What are they doing?"
Atem put his cheeks in his palms and peered down at the laughing figures below.
"They're celebrating."
Mana turned her head. Her hair brushed the water and cast ripples over the laughs. "Celebrating what?"
"Christmas," Atem answered with only a glance to meet her eyes.
Mana blinked. She furrowed her brow.
"Chry … chryst …?"
Atem chuckled, and this time he didn't try to hold it back.
"Christmas," he repeated, more clearly, and for the first time he noticed how foreign it sounded in their native tongue. "Aibou told me about it. It's a Western holiday."
Mana leaned her head to one side, then the other. "Huh …"
Atem breathed out heavier than he knew someone could breathe in a world where there was no air. He put his hands on the edge of the stone surrounding the pool and pushed himself to stand straight.
"What are you doing over here, Mana?" he asked, and though his eyes focused on the forms moving in the ripples of the water, his mind centered on her. "I thought you were practicing your magic."
He turned his head back, and Mana nodded so fast her hair bounced.
"I was! But I thought I'd come check up on you, you know, make sure everything's okay." She paused. He quirked an eyebrow, and Mana shrugged. "Plus I got bored."
Atem tried not to smirk. "Bored?"
"Of magic!" Mana burst without a second's pause, as if she had been waiting to get the chance to admit it. Atem only just managed to keep the smirk off his face, and settled for the smallest of smiles that lasted a moment before he had to wipe it away.
"But Mana, you love practicing."
Mana shrugged again.
"Well, yeah, but …"
"What?"
"It's just so boring doing alone!"
Atem's lips twitched up against his will. "Why don't you ask Mahaad to work with you?"
Mana threw her arms out to her sides in late emphasis of her words, then crossed them over her chest and made something that looked far too much like a pout. Not for the first time, Atem wondered if Mana even realized that she was no longer ten years old.
"He's busy!" she insisted. She stuck out her bottom lip. "And whenever I just wanna practice, he always tries to teach."
Atem raised an eyebrow. He tried but failed to wipe the smirk off his face.
"Well, he is your teacher, Mana."
Mana thrust her arms out to her sides again, and might have whacked Atem in the stomach had he been just a step closer than he was.
"But still! I like practicing with Master, and I'm really glad he's here and everything, but sometimes I just wish I could teach someone too!"
The smirk vanished.
"… teach someone?"
Mana's pouting lip and crossed arms loosened, and she broke out into a wide and eager grin.
"Yeah! Me be a teacher, too!"
Atem blinked. It was all he could do to keep from breaking out in laughs.
"Mana, you're still learning."
"I know! But I could do it! Really!" she almost shouted. Her shoulders fell, and her lip poked out again. "But there's no one here to teach! Everyone who wants to know magic already knows it! It's. So. Boring!"
This time, the laugh pressed against Atem's lips, and he burst out into chuckles that rang in perfection he pretended he couldn't hear.
Sometimes he missed Jounouchi-kun's laughs, never perfect, always flawed. Choking on his own saliva, coughing in the midst of the sound then laughing again, running into something or tripping over his own feet or snorting in front of Kaiba. Sometimes Atem wondered how much Jounouchi-kun would upset the peace here.
Never did Atem doubt that he would have loved it if he did.
Mana pouted one more time, then turned her head to the pool. She breathed out a long and heavy breath as Atem's laughs faded into silence.
"Why don't you go visit them?"
Atem's shoulders dropped. His smile fell.
"What?"
"Why don't you go down there?" Mana repeated. One arm waved toward the pool, and she grinned as if it was the most natural thing in the world. "You know, spend this 'Krysmass' with them!"
Atem hardly even thought to correct her. He furrowed his brow, glanced at the pool, then back to Mana. She still grinned. He still stared.
"Why?"
Mana's smile changed. Her shoulders fell, and it looked as if she used all the will power she had not to reach over and put a hand on his arm. He couldn't tell if it was because of tradition that was now far out-dated or simple friendly hesitance that she didn't.
But it didn't take a genius to know that Mana had never paid much attention to tradition.
"Don't try to lie, Prince, we both know you miss them!" Mana insisted. Somehow she still managed to be gentle, and somehow, through it all, she still smiled and held her arm out toward the pool once again. "So go on! I'll go practice magic, you go visit them."
Atem opened his mouth, then closed it, then opened it again.
"Mana, they won't even be able to see me. What difference would it make?"
Mana's smile changed again, soft and real. As if for once all the wisdom that could have been gained in three thousand years had been bestowed upon her in a split instant, and she knew how to dispel the darkness he had known for all the years she had watched him from here.
"Believe me," Mana whispered, and this time he could almost feel the warmth of the fingers that did not brush his shoulder's skin. "It will."
Atem blinked and stared, and the smile he had almost grown used to on Mana's face stretched to her ears.
"See you later, Prince!"
And she turned and bounded away into the rest of their world, steps pushing her into the air as if she flew each time she left the ground.
Atem smiled and let out a breath, his head shaking back and forth as he watched the young magician in training bounce off to her own practices. Happy as she had ever been, happy as she probably would always be.
Sometimes he envied her, but envy was somehow more difficult to feel when he cared for her as much as he did.
Sometimes he wondered if his new friends would have liked to meet his old.
He shook his head again, a chuckle escaping his lips, and closed his eyes to feel his spirit begin to shift and some small part of existence begin to move toward the familiar world some infinite distance away, and yet somehow hardly far at all.
He still heard Mana's laughter in the distance when he knew it had long faded away.
"You sure Jii-san won't mind us opening these up?"
It was the sort of question Yuugi would have expected from Anzu, or even the little voice in his head that always got louder even if he knew he wasn't doing anything wrong. But nevertheless, the question came from Jounouchi-kun, and when the words registered in Yuugi's head, he couldn't help but grin.
He pulled open the top of the old cardboard box that had probably been used for a dozen things before this, to reveal packs of cards, colored boxes for board games, and even a few old jigsaw puzzles. He breathed out slow and felt the dust gust out in his face.
"He was planning to keep them here anyway," he muttered with a shrug. "I heard him telling my mom about it earlier this week. We get a whole new shipment on Monday, and all this stuff would have been useless. Besides, I can just take it out of my allowance if he wants it paid for."
Jounouchi-kun's and Honda-kun's eyes went wide at all the treasures hidden in the old, almost rotted box they had pulled from one of the storage closets, and Yuugi smiled at his three best friends in the world as they pulled those treasures out one by one, bit by bit.
"Think of it as … my Christmas present to you guys."
Anzu smiled, and somehow, any bit of discomfort that had lingered in Yuugi's chest vanished as her lips turned up.
"Thanks, Yuugi."
Yuugi smiled back, and they sat in a circle on the floor with the box just to the side, Jounouchi-kun with a few Duel Monsters card packs snuck into his pocket, and Anzu with a little box of jacks in her hands. Honda-kun leaned into the box with both his arms inside. His eyebrows furrowed.
"I've never even seen this one," Honda-kun muttered, half to himself and half to the rest of them, as he sat back on the smooth tile floor with a green rectangular box in his hands. He shook it, and the pieces rattled inside. "What is it?"
Yuugi grinned and his eyes lit.
"Oh! That's 'Clue.'"
Jounouchi-kun and Honda-kun gave long, collective blinks. Honda-kun set down the box.
"Eh?"
"It's an American game, I think," Yuugi started. He pulled off the top of the box to reveal a folded board, little silver pieces shaped like candlesticks and knives, and a stack of cards. He pulled out the board. "In the game, someone's been murdered at a dinner party, and the players have to figure out who did it by suspecting and accusing the different guests in turn, with the weapons and the places in the house—"
"All the cards are in English."
Yuugi glanced up and found Jounouchi-kun with the stack of cards in his hands, fanning them out several at a time with large and blinking eyes. Yuugi gave a sheepish grin.
"Yeah, well, uh, they don't make it in Japanese." He shrugged. "Probably why it didn't sell too well."
Honda-kun took the cards from Jounouchi-kun and flipped through them again, as if hoping that there might be something there he could read. Jounouchi-kun pulled out a thin white packet with English letters printed in small black print. He stared at it like he was staring at Yiddish—which Yuugi had once heard one of Jii-chan's more obscure game providers speak over the phone—then held the packet to his side.
"Hey, Anzu, think you could read the instructions for us?"
Anzu blinked, then straightened herself even as she tucked her legs under her on the floor.
"I'm not fluent yet, Jounouchi."
Jounouchi-kun looked at the packet, then back at her, then back at the packet. He shrugged and leaned his head to the side. "… better than me."
Anzu's brow rose.
"Well, those are a few words I never thought I'd hear coming out of your mouth."
"Hey!"
Honda-kun laughed out loud, and Yuugi joined in without even realizing it until the sound had left his mouth. But Jounouchi-kun just made a face at Anzu. Anzu smirked, arms crossed over her chest. Jounouchi-kun went back to looking at the packet, as if he thought staring at it for long enough might make it easier to understand.
Yet again, Honda-kun chuckled, then turned his head to the cards and the pieces still lying in the box. He looked up with a grin.
"Hey, Yuugi, remember that day we all came to your house a while after Battle City?"
Jounouchi-kun smiled as well.
"Oh, yeah!" he agreed as Yuugi twirled one of the silver pieces in the box. "And we showed Jii-san all our new rare cards and spent the whole day getting them all cleaned up?"
"Back when he couldn't stop staring at the god cards! He just kept polishing them, I thought he was gonna rub the picture off …"
Honda-kun laughed at his own comment and crossed his arms over his chest with the little silver candlestick between his fingers. Yuugi just stared at the ground with gentle, soft eyes, and an equally gentle smile.
"… yeah," he murmured, almost under his breath. "I think I remember that."
He stopped there. But Jounouchi-kun and Honda-kun said nothing, and when he looked back up, he found them staring. Anzu shifted closer on the floor.
He met her eyes, and he found them curious, quiet, and just a little bit sad.
She parted her lips very slow.
"Wait, that … that wasn't you then … was it?"
Yuugi smiled, just the same as before, to all three of his friends. Anzu stared, and Honda-kun's eyebrows rose, and Jounouchi-kun dropped his shoulders to shake his head toward the ground.
"Whoa … I never even noticed."
Yuugi just kept his smile and looked down at his hands. He had never really looked at those hands when he was a spirit and Atem had been in control. He wondered if they looked the same, or if perhaps there had been differences he had never bothered to figure out.
He quirked his head.
"Almost no one ever did."
Anzu put a hand to her head, fingers brushing through her brown hair that now touched her shoulders. It had been shorter when he had solved the Puzzle. He wondered if Atem had ever noticed the change.
He wondered how he could have, if it had taken Yuugi this long to see.
"I think I may have guessed …" Anzu whispered, her eyes on the ground. She breathed out. "But we were all just having so much fun."
Yuugi nodded a tiny nod, and smiled even though it hurt.
Jounouchi-kun's shoulders fell further, and he wrung his hands close to the ground. He kept his eyes toward the floor.
"He was laughing."
Anzu said nothing. Honda-kun breathed out. "Yeah, I didn't hear him laugh much …"
"He didn't," Yuugi muttered, so quietly he thought only he could hear, but all three of them turned their heads. Yuugi glanced away and shrugged. "Not really his thing, at least around other people. But … I think he was really happy then."
He could almost hear the words on Anzu's lips, but still she was silent. Yuugi leaned his head back and stared at the ceiling, and somewhere deep inside, he almost thought he could feel someone looking back.
"I wonder if he laughs where he is now …"
The whisper rose up in the air and spread out like wind, like breath, and vanished into nothing, and yet somehow he could not wipe the thought from his head that someone had heard.
Warm fingertips brushed his shoulder, and when he looked back down he found Anzu's hand on his upper arm, her palm rubbing back and forth like Yuugi remembered his mother had once done, or his grandfather, or someone whose warm hand he had never been able to feel, but who had been there next to him, hand keeping him steady, for what seemed like far longer than it had really been.
She didn't smile. She didn't need to. Yuugi smiled for them both.
It seemed like a long time later when the gentle faces on Jounouchi-kun's and Honda-kun's faces, matching theirs to perfection, faded, and Jounouchi-kun cleared his throat.
"So, Anzu, about those instructions …"
Anzu scrunched her face with wide eyes and jerked her head to the side.
"Let's see you read some, Jounouchi," she suggested, shoving the packet back in his face so Jounouchi-kun nearly fell back. "You're in dire need of a good English lesson."
"What? But Anzu …!"
It was something wonderful and terrible to stand there not two meters away, and not be noticed, not be seen.
So many times as a spirit in the Puzzle he had projected himself, and no one had seen him then, though sometimes he thought, in the later months of his company, Anzu's eyebrows would twitch when he drew nearer, as if there was something she knew was there but could not for the life of her name. Jounouchi-kun and Honda-kun had never twitched or paused. They would go on about their everyday business even if he were to walk right through them—which, interestingly enough, they did not notice, but it gave him a uncomfortable jolt—and he had existed like that all the time. Invisible. Unseen.
But Aibou had always seen him.
Even when he pretended he couldn't, even when he pretended there was nothing there for the sake of keeping away unwanted attention, Aibou could see him. Aibou would talk to him and smile at him the instant he projected from the Puzzle. He would notice worried expressions on his face, or would simply greet him with the same enthusiasm he always had. The enthusiasm Atem had loved long before he had come to miss it. The caring gentleness he had appreciated even then, before he fully contemplated the thought of losing it.
And it brought a smile to his face and a deep, twisted ache in his heart to stand just two meters away, and for Aibou to not even look up.
And they said the dead could not feel pain.
But through the pain he smiled. That smile grew on his face as he phased his spirit through to the living world as Mana had taught him some months back. It wasn't something he did often—Isis said the dead were not meant to walk among the living, and all frequent visits would do would bind him to a world to which he no longer belonged. But when Isis had said that, Mahaad had walked in and laughed so loud all the guards had rushed in to see if he was being attacked.
Atem didn't think he had ever seen Mahaad laugh before. Not a chuckle, not a smile that muffled a snicker, but a true, honest laugh.
Of course, Atem had laughed too when Mahaad paused his snickers to remind Isis of all the times she had gone back to check on things for a good fifty years after she died.
Isis remained in a somewhat irritable mood for some time after that.
But though Atem did not go to the living world often, he had long mastered the technique. The simple magic—or perhaps it wasn't even magic, he had heard everyone could do it, with enough practice—was quick to learn, and he had figured early on that he should learn it as quickly as he could, just in case he were to need it.
He was very glad this time that he did not need to ask Isis's help, and therefore subject himself to a short lecture on the psychological effects of frequent visits until Mahaad laid a hand on her shoulder and reminded her that she had much more important things to do.
She didn't have more important things to do. Not there. But Mahaad was a surprisingly good liar, when he needed to be.
It hadn't taken him as long as he might have thought to adjust to being here again. He had come back before, usually only for a minute, or watched down upon everyone from the little pool. But this was the first time he had been here for long. This was the first time he had gotten the chance to settle in.
It took him only a few minutes before he was leaning in his old transparent form against the wall of the shop, staring down at his four dearest friends, and it was only a minute after that he began to let himself pretend that he was not wearing his white linen and gold jewelry, but the old Domino High uniform with a black shirt and jacket, and his skin was pale instead of tan, and there was no crown upon his head.
And the Puzzle still hung around his and Aibou's necks, instead of the emptiness of the air that had taken its place.
Jounouchi-kun laughed with hands clutching the dark green cards Atem had never seen. Honda-kun laughed with him, and even when Anzu reached over to smack them both on the shoulder, she laughed, too.
Aibou only smiled. Smiled a real smile with shining eyes, a smile Atem had seen so many times before, and yet one which never ceased to amaze him.
He hadn't changed. Atem had known that before, when he had visited for short whiles, and somehow he had known it all on his own nonetheless. From what Atem could see, he really hadn't gotten any taller—but he probably would. He still had that same smile, that brightness in his eyes that had been there until the moment Atem stepped into the glowing light of the world beyond. He still had that caring, that laughter, for his friends. The one thing Atem knew he could never lose.
The one thing Atem had spent over a year with him trying to learn.
And what Aibou had finally managed to teach him before it was his time to go.
They were playing some sort of game. Atem was sure he had probably heard of it at one point or another—there was scarcely a game in Jii-chan's shop he hadn't heard of—even if he had never played it. Aibou called it "Clue." He seemed to already have the hang of it, even if Atem had never seen him play it, and even Anzu had gotten her bearings within the first few turns.
Jounouchi-kun and Honda-kun were lost. Honda-kun just wrote it off to being the first time he had played, but Jounouchi-kun insisted that his passion and interest was dueling and he wasn't going to waste the time he could spend building his deck trying to perfect his skills at a new game.
But he played nonetheless, and at that, Atem couldn't help but chuckle and grin.
Aibou's head twitched and he blinked as the chuckle filled the air, but he looked back down at the board and went back to the conversation before Atem could register that he had even moved at all.
Atem tried to tell himself that it was just a coincidence, but that was far more difficult than he would have believed.
It was a long time later when all four of them stood from their game with smiles on their faces and laughter surrounding them like a glow. Atem watched from his place by the wall as Jounouchi-kun, Honda-kun and Anzu walked through the doorway out of the shop and into the rest of the house, Jounouchi-kun taking the lead and saying something about raiding the kitchen for leftovers in "real holiday tradition."
But as the three of them slipped out of sight, Aibou still stood in the center of the room.
He turned his head, very slowly, to his side. The movement was unsure, his eyes big and blinking, his shoulders dropped, his lips parted just a bit. Atem did not move. He watched. He watched as Aibou turned to face the spot where he stood, so Aibou's eyes stared just below his own, and Atem looked at him with a gentleness and love even he had never imagined he could give.
Aibou breathed in, and breathed out, and his breath was the only sound Atem could make out. The boy moved his eyes until his violet orbs met Atem's own.
Eyes stared into eyes.
Soul stared into soul.
Aibou breathed, and Atem breathed with him for a second and a second alone.
Then Aibou turned at Anzu's voice and walked out of the shop and after his friends, and Atem let him go, his lips curling into a smile he somehow knew could last for a very long time.
And the moon and stars through the windows shone just a little brighter than they had before.
Atem breathed out another breath that was not a breath and stood in the moonlight of the quiet game shop, the sounds of laughter from the kitchen echoing in his head, until something tugged at his soul and he let himself fade away.
By the time they all left for their own homes, it was ten at night, and it was snowing.
Snow hadn't been in the weather forecast. But at about nine-thirty Jounouchi-kun had passed by a window and shouted for everyone else to come and see the tiny flakes gathering on the street. It wasn't even nine-thirty-one when the four of them raced out of the house to dance in the freshly-fallen snow, and it had just hit nine-thirty-two when Yuugi's mother leaned out the front door of the shop and shouted for all of them to get inside before they froze to death without their coats.
Yuugi was just glad she hadn't noticed that Jounouchi-kun wasn't even wearing shoes.
When they left, they waved and called back to him until they vanished into the darkness of the night and the falling of the snow. Yuugi stood waving in the doorway for a minute after they were gone and their voices could no longer be heard, until the cold grew so much that his mother put a hand on his shoulder and guided him back inside.
She was gentler than before as she closed the door and patted his shoulder again, but Yuugi couldn't quite bring himself to say anything about it.
She stayed by the door, and Yuugi stepped away. His eyes perked up at the faint sound of an old man's voice calling from the other side of the house.
"Goodnight, Yuugi!"
Yuugi turned his head toward the stairs just through the doorway leading out of the shop, and though he couldn't see him, he imagined Jii-chan waving from the top step, though he knew very well that Yuugi wouldn't be able to see. And though Yuugi knew it as well, he waved, too.
"Goodnight, Jii-chan!"
The ceiling creaked with footsteps, and Yuugi breathed out and lowered his arm at the sound of one of the bedroom doors squeaking shut.
He turned and met his mother's eyes as she stood near the glass shop door with the key in her hand. She smiled. He smiled back. But when his smile faded, hers stayed. She slipped the key into the pocket of her apron—he didn't remember her being the one to close up the shop very often—and took a step toward him. Only one, then she stopped and lowered her shoulders. Her smile grew, but stayed just as soft.
"Happy Christmas, Yuugi."
Yuugi nodded and smiled again.
"Goodnight, Mama."
His mother said nothing. Her smile slipped, bit by bit, as her eyes never left his face, as she stared into his own violet eyes as if she had something to say but couldn't bring herself to say it.
She leaned back, as if in hesitance, before stepping toward him again. Once, twice. Then she shuffled the rest of the distance across the shop as fast as her feet would carry her without leaving the ground themselves.
Then she wrapped her arms around his back and squeezed him as tight as her arms would allow.
Yuugi stiffened. His eyes widened, his arms froze at his sides. But his mother hugged him tighter still, and he could feel her breath, warm, slow, and just a little shaking, brush against his ear and his shoulder and the edges of his hair. The beat of her heart, the life that rushed through her, so real, as real as it had ever been. The same life that still rushed through him, no matter what the pain he tried to escape.
His arms relaxed and he moved them, just a little, until he felt his fingers brush her waist. But he stopped when she leaned back just enough to press her lips firm to the top of his head, still taller than him, still just tall enough to press her face through his hair. She pulled her head away and stared at him, and the smile that had slipped from her face returned with a gentleness and kindness he doubted even she could understand.
Then she slipped away without a word, her arms falling from his form, and shuffled out of the shop and toward the stairs. And he could not bring himself to move until he heard the bedroom door down the upstairs hall creak open and gently pull shut.
He breathed out a puff of air, and he could still feel the warmth of her arms squeezing him for a long time after she was gone.
But he said nothing, even if he knew she wouldn't be able to hear.
He closed his eyes, opened them again, and turned his head with the determination glowing in his soul renewed.
Yuugi was quiet as he slipped behind the shopfront desk and dug out the little plastic bag he had stuffed underneath when he came back with the turkey that afternoon. He stuck his hand through the rustling plastic and pulled out the single, small thing lying inside. He ran his fingers over its edges, its crevices and turns. And he carried it firm but gentle in the palm of his hand.
Within a minute it was sealed in one of the spare boxes in the storage room, and two minutes after that it was wrapped in paper of royal purple with a bright gold bow. His mother would probably yell at him for using up the last of their nice wrappings. He had decided quite a while ago that it was well worth it.
He tugged the bow as tight as it would go and stood to stare at the glass door at the front of the shop, snow still falling outside as soft as it could be.
Yuugi didn't know what he was doing. And even if he had known what he was doing, he wouldn't have been able to explain it. He didn't know when the idea had come into his head, and right now, it didn't matter. All Yuugi knew was walking across the smooth floor of the shop in nothing but his school shirt, pants, and socks, the wrapped box in both his hands, carried with the utmost care, and bringing one hand away to push the glass door and let the stinging night air and flecks of snow flush to his cheeks.
The night was quiet. As quiet as the house, as quiet as his breath, as quiet as the world. The snow fell from the sky as slow as it could, no wind, no breeze, nothing but the cold biting at his hands. But he ignored it and gripped the box, feeling the paper stay warm even when his hands did not, feeling the faint peace that seemed to glow from the box itself.
He wondered if the thing inside knew where it was meant to go.
He set the box down in the thin layer of snow on the concrete just in front of the door. Snowflakes fluttered and rested on the gold of the bow, and somehow those white flakes shimmered like diamonds, like little suns, even in the light of the moon and the stars.
Yuugi stood and stared at the box glowing where it sat, as if it was regal in itself, as if the purple was a mantle, and the gold was a crown. As if there were two violet eyes that did not quite match the paper staring back at him and smiling, even if Yuugi knew it was only in his head.
He turned and walked inside, and kept all the words in his head from leaving his lips.
The jingling of the little bell when the door closed behind him rang in his head for a very long time.
The house was as he slipped up the stairs and into his room, and changed out of his school uniform and into his pale blue pajamas. He could still feel the faint chill of the house in his room, even though the thickness and the warmth of his blankets. He tugged the covers close to his chin and stared at the skylight and the bits of shimmering white snow falling like tiny stars from the blackened night sky.
He breathed out, and felt the warmth of his breath in front of his face. He stared at the skylight, at the moon, at the stars, and wondered in the back of his head if they were the same moon and stars that a young pharaoh had stared at from his balcony thousands of years ago.
Yuugi closed his eyes and let the darkness fall.
And just as his eyelids slipped shut, he almost thought he saw a smiling face above his, tan and transparent with spiky hair and a golden crown, melding in with the shimmer of the gently falling snow.
"Yuugi!"
Darkness. Quiet. That odd sense of peace that floated around him in that state between sleep and wake.
"Yuugi, come down! It's morning!"
… no … just school … don't have to get up this early …
"Yuugi! Wake up! If you don't come down, I'm giving your presents to Honda!"
Yuugi's eyes snapped open and his brow furrowed as tight as it could get.
Presents?
He blinked and squinted at the gentle morning light that poured in through his windows. His eyes met the ceiling, then the skylight, the glass where he would have expected a pale blue sky and a few clouds.
And he saw that sky.
That sky coated with clouds with only a bit of blue poking through, the clouds white, just like the snow that lay in patches like balls of cotton all over the skylight itself.
He pushed himself up in bed, the blankets falling from his body, and swung his legs onto the floor.
Cold. The whole room chilled, even through his pajamas, even though he had only just gotten out. But he didn't care. Yuugi lifted his head to the snow on the skylight, to the voice he had heard from just down the stairs. To the wide eyes that couldn't have gotten any wider if he tried, and the anticipation of something that was to come.
Even though he had no idea what that something was.
Yuugi bolted across the floor of his room and out the door and down the hall. He nearly tripped twice running down the stairs, and only caught himself just in time to keep from falling on his backside as soon as he reached the first floor.
He turned before the voice could even begin to call him again, barely hearing the heaviness of his own footsteps, just running into the living room to find his mother and Jii-chan standing near the couch, smiling at him as if they had been waiting for him all this time.
And behind them, a tiny pine tree just taller than Yuugi himself, thin, leaves falling onto the carpet, with tiny glass ornaments clipped onto the branches and three boxes wrapped in shining paper and tied with bows sitting around the base of the trunk.
He lost track of the seconds it took for him to remember to breathe.
Yuugi's feet moved of their own accord, Jii-chan and his mother stepping out of the way as he passed them and walked as close as he dared to get to the frail little tree. He turned his head left, then right, then back and forth so fast his hair swung with his head.
"Jii-chan! … it's a … a …!"
Yuugi turned back, and Jii-chan chuckled low in his chest so the sound rumbled as loud as Yuugi's breath. He tilted his head, and for a moment Yuugi imagined he was his father. Taller, if only by a bit, with more color to his hair. Yuugi wondered if it was just the excitement of the day that made him forget the last time he had seen the man's face.
He didn't doubt what made it so he didn't need to care.
Not today.
"It won't last past tomorrow," Jii-chan explained at last, and motioned toward the thin, frail tree. "It was the only one they were selling. Christmas trees aren't very popular in Japan, you know."
His smile turned to a smirk, and his eyes flicked to Yuugi's mother. She crossed her arms and rolled her eyes, but her smile did not fade.
Yuugi just shook his head again.
"And presents! Mama, you really meant …?"
Her arms in front of her chest tightened, and she raised her brow.
"Yuugi, when have I ever lied to you?" she asked, in a voice gentler than her words would have made out. Yuugi just stared, and she rolled her eyes once more and nodded toward the tree. "Go on, open them up. There aren't very many."
Jii-chan chuckled again. "And you might want to hurry. Don't want everyone else to get to the snow first."
Yuugi's mother's smile dropped.
"Otousan, don't encourage him to rush around!"
"Too late."
The words met Yuugi's ears much like another laugh, and Yuugi didn't bother to turn his head to see his mother's face. He just dropped to his knees and tore open the bright blue paper of the first little box, and focused himself with all the wonder and energy of a small child to find the treasure inside.
Memory made it very difficult for him not to feel as if he was placing that last piece in the Puzzle once again, and for him not to feel as if the chain and the gold still hung comfortable and safe around his neck.
Jii-chan laughed, his mother sighed, and Yuugi gasped at each of the gifts he tore open and admired, held out from his face. He didn't care when he looked silly—and he knew he looked silly—and he didn't care when he pulled out one of his new toys and played with it in his pajamas and his socks on the carpet like he hadn't for years before.
He never met his mother's eyes, but he always felt her watching, and after a while, the smile he could feel in her eyes matched the one on her face.
He still saw the smile, whether or not she wanted to give it, when he leapt to his feet five minutes later and scrambled through the living room and the house and the front of the shop to the glass door, and pulled it open. And she did not protest, even when he stared, still in his pajamas and socks, in the middle of the doorway, at the thick white powder fallen from the clouds and covering all that could be seen.
Yuugi's eyes fell and settled on the spot on the ground just in front of the shop.
There was no box. No box wrapped in purple paper and a golden bow. Merely an indent in the middle of the snow.
He knelt as low as he could without his knees touching the ground. He brushed the snow, fresher now, with his fingertips, and felt the sting on his bare skin. He didn't know which one of them would have taken it, or why, though the why was easier to guess. And for all he knew, it could have been a random stranger passing by with the thought that they could take the present for themselves.
It was difficult for Yuugi to blame them, either.
It was much harder for him to convince himself that he didn't care that it had been taken away.
But he did nothing. Nothing but purse his lips and squeeze his eyes shut, then opened them again to see that same empty spot in the snow.
Yuugi turned his head, pushed himself to his feet, and stopped.
A bird hovered in the air not two meters from his face. Just a little higher, just a little in front. Fluttering down bit by bit from the sky, as if it had been there all along and had just been waiting for the right time.
Pale brown wings. Darker design, dark eyes that stared into his as if it actually knew what it was looking for.
A falcon.
A falcon with a white lotus, in full bloom, petals spread, dark yellow center, clutched in both its talons as if it had been picked moments before.
Yuugi lifted his head as high as it would go, and the falcon lowered itself further still, its wings flapping and beating the air, the snowflakes that still fell fluttering around its feathers. The bird showed no signs of cold or discontent, merely clutched the stem of the lotus, the petals almost glowing in the reflected light of the sun.
Then it opened its talons, and Yuugi held out his hands to catch the lotus in his palms, the flower fresh and real, the gentle scent swirling up. And the falcon turned and flew off into the distance before Yuugi could even open his mouth to speak.
He watched the fluttering of the wings and soaring of the bird as it swirled in the air, grew smaller and smaller in the distance until it vanished into nothing, and it was gone as if it had never been.
And the lotus still lay in his palms, still fresh, still bright and alive.
Yuugi breathed out, and curled his fingers around the stem. He felt the smoothness of the green, the frail and gentle petals as white as the snow. The warmth in the cold, as if the flower itself was a hand placed within his own, warm from the Egyptian sun, warm from life.
No matter how Yuugi tried—and he hardly tried at all—he couldn't stop his eyes from squeezing shut and opening again, and his head lifting to the sky with the clouds and the glow of the blue in the morning sun.
The flower settled in his hands as he stood just in front of the empty spot in the snow, and its warmth had never been more real.
Yuugi's smile grew.
"Thanks, Atem."
And though he knew it was just in his head, just his own mind playing tricks, Yuugi let himself believe in the faint chuckle he heard in his ears, and the smile glowing deep in his soul like the sun that shone over the rooftops of the distant homes and into a new day.
Happy Christmas, Aibou.
And it was.