The silence, the emptiness, the brightness was overwhelming. Every minute of every day was filled with the mind-numbing nothingness that came from being the only person in his head. Nobody answered his thoughts, there was no comforting background noise, no sense of another being there with him, sharing his experiences and understanding his feelings. It was enough to drive a person crazy. The others didn't understand. They didn't know what it was like to lose half of yourself. Sure, they tried to be there, but they couldn't fill the cold void that had suddenly appeared in his life. There were only two in the whole world who could possibly share the same sense of loss, but they were having as hard a time as he was coping with it.
Noise. It was too quiet. He needed noise, any noise, to drown out the lack of presence. His radio was permanently playing when he was in his room, even at night. The TV blared in the background when he wandered around the house. When he walked to school, sat in the cafeteria, walked home or went anywhere, earphones were stuck firmly in his ears, filling his head with noise in a desperate effort to distract him from the knowledge that he was well and truly alone with his thoughts. Late at night, when everything was dark and the radio was turned down low so as not to disturb his grandpa, Yugi Moto wept, mourning the loss of the one person who could truly keep him in the light.
They were too close. Everyone crowded around him. All the time. Everywhere. Jostling, bumping, laughing, shouting, touching. He couldn't escape. Even at home, with no other living human, the ghosts of the past were always there. Everything reminded him of HIM. Everywhere he looked, he could see HIS face, smirking at him from the shadows, laughing at his weakness. But he welcomed it. He locked himself in his room for days at a time, staring at himself in the mirror, willing himself to see another's reflection in it. But it was always just him, and the mocking laughter was just his imagination. Although he feared the darkness in himself, he missed the strength it gave him, even as it took over and used him. It was a constant companion, something he could cling to in his life, companionship that he both hated and craved. Without it, he was just an empty shell, sucked dry then abandoned by the parasite. That day, he decided not to go to school. Perhaps this time, the mirror would lie. And so Ryou sat staring into his own eyes, ignoring the ringing phone and the knocks on the door, waiting for someone that would never return.
Everywhere he looked, he was blinded by light, as if to make up for all the years he had spent in darkness. Lamps blazed cheerily, never turned off for an instant. He missed the shadows, the moments when he could sink into cool, unfeeling bliss of sleep under the far off twinkling of stars. But now his dreams were filled with chaos, those last few moments when he felt the shroud ripped from him and he was blinded by the light. And now, it was too overwhelming. He could feel himself drowning in panic, smothered by the real world. It was too much. He barely heard his sister's shouted question, her concerned voice faint in his ears as he rushed for the door. He just knew that he had to get away, away from everything, back to the security of before, when someone else was there. Someone who would take over when the pain became too much, who would fix everything. Jumping on his bike, ignoring the pleas of his sister and brother, Malik raced off into the night, searching in vain for something that was gone forever.